A short ‘Friday post’:

A lot is talked, and written, about ‘Purpose’¹.

If a group of humans decide to organise and spend time and resources to achieve [something], then – if they genuinely want this – they ought to define the ‘what’ and ‘why’ so that the network of actions and interactions have a chance of producing the desired emergent properties. A clear purpose (ref. intent).

“Without an aim, there is no system…the aim must be clear to everyone in the system.” [Deming]

However, just because some powerful stakeholder(s) have set out and communicated a purpose statement, this doesn’t make it so (despite the posters on the wall).

There will be a gap between the (espoused²) intent and the reality. Being aware of this gap, and working to understand why it exists, is necessary if valuable progress is to be made.

“The error is to blithely assume that the purpose of a [human designed] system is what the designer, owner, or person paying the bill wants it to be. If you don’t actually and actively look for the emergent [what is happening], it’s ridiculously easy to assume that they are what you’d like them to be.” [Patrick Hoverstadt]

Stafford Beer³ devised the POSIWID acronym to assist –

“The purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment, or sheer ignorance of circumstances.”

He went on to say:

“There is, after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.” [Beer]

How can we use POSIWID to assist us?

POSIWID can be used to counter the belief that the purpose of the system is understood purely from the intentions of those that design, operate or promote it. Complex systems (which organisations full of human beings certainly are) are not controllable by simple notions of management. Interventions in complex systems can be properly understood by observing their true effect on system behaviour…and we can ‘see this’ by studying ‘at the gemba’⁴.

In short, we need to understand:

• the intention(s) of the human-designed system in focus (the desired purpose); and
• what the current system design (and its wider environment) actually does (ref. POSIWID)

…and we need to critically reflect on both, and the gap.

A device to assist with thinking about POSIWID:

It can be hard to put the intended purpose to one-side, to see what we currently can’t.

I use a device to assist with this thinking and, for those of you of a certain age and who remember, think Mork (“na-nu na-nu”)⁵:

Imagine a bunch of Aliens exploring the universe – to expand their knowledge and report back to their planet elders. The Aliens are positioned above our Earth, looking down on us.

They are interested in what is going on down here…so they pick a particular human-designed system (i.e. yours) and they study it for a wee while – they watch what happens and try to work out why it exists.

Now, let’s assume that those Aliens can’t understand our language (our beautiful ‘Purpose’ posters are useless to their endeavour) and they don’t really understand our ways of being – so they don’t have any pre-conceptions.

They’ve got to ‘report back’ to their planet about what they’ve learned.

What would they have seen your system doing…and therefore what would they deduce its purpose to be?⁶

So, as an example⁷: Rather than thinking that the purpose is to [help people live better lives]…the Aliens think (from what they’ve seen) that it is ‘to repeatedly fill in forms, pass stuff around and around, and keep interviewing and assessing each other’.

I hope you get the point. The device is to help (as far as is possible) put ourselves in the shoes of an objective, independent observer who isn’t going to ‘fall for’ the conventional ‘spin’.

Footnotes:

1. Clarification: I’ve seen/read people ‘get at’ the idea of purpose statements, and when their ‘beef’ is with the crappy corporate strapline then I wholeheartedly agree – I absolutely hate warm, fluffy, supposed purpose, marketing/ propaganda shite.

However, if I were funding a human-designed system (as most of us do via our taxes) I would want those working within it to know what they are supposed to be achieving for their customers – you know, the ones that the system was created to do something for.

And I’m not talking about some standardised goal. I’m referring to actually helping a person according to their variety. I don’t want purpose to be anything about ‘how’…but I do want it to be about ‘why’ – what ‘we’ (those working in the system) are supposed to be achieving. Even better would be if ‘we’ were involved in making this clear! And even better still would be to regularly reflect on this.

Further, I ‘get’ that everyone working within the human-designed system will have their own beliefs…so telling them what their ‘values’ are/ ought to be is nonsense…but I don’t want them doing ‘whatever’. I’d like some directionality….and (I’d venture) so would they.

2. Re. Espoused: I’m aware that there is another ‘level’ to this. I am assuming that the stated intent is what those in power/authority would like to happen…however, I’m mindful that this may not be the case. It could merely be propaganda for some darker intent (a cover, so to speak).

To note: If this (i.e. a cover up) were the case, then POSIWID perhaps becomes even more profound and useful in surfacing ‘what’s actually going on’ to society.

3. Stafford Beer (1926 – 2002) was a theorist, consultant and professor and founder of the field of Management Cybernetics. 

4. Gemba: the place of action/ where the work get’s done (ref. ‘the front line’ or ‘at the coal face’).

5. A 1970s/80s TV show: For those of you who don’t know…Mork (played by the late Robin Williams) is an alien that arrives on Earth in an egg-shaped spacecraft. He’s been sent from his planet Ork by his superior (Orson) to observe – and attempt to understand – human behaviour and regularly report back his findings….and there is much ‘serious comedy’ within what he has deduced.

6. The Duck test: I’m reminded of ‘if it looks like a duck, moves like a duck and quacks like a duck…then it’s probably a duck!’

7. I wrote a post waaay back in 2015 that covered POSIWID and, in it, I gave some specific examples of supposed purpose vs. reality. And you can imagine those Aliens observing the reality and deducing it as the purpose.