The purpose of a system is what it does (not …what it purports to do?)

Heard a nifty phrase this week “The purpose of a system is what it does” (credit to Stafford Beer [1]) also known as “POSIWID”.

Definitions (simplified)

In full transparency and from AI overviews, POSIWID (Purpose Of A System Is What It Does) states that the true purpose of a system can only be understood by observing its actual behavior, rather than relying on the intentions of its designers or operators.

My simplified explanation is that we should observe the outcomes of a system vs what the system purports to do or intends to achieve. So, to look more at the impact (actions/behaviors) rather than talk (intentions/purported goals).

Gemini generated with the prompt for an image on “systems thinking”

Applying POSIWID

Some scenarios for consideration, where I loosely define systems as a business/organization.

• A system has a goal, but there are other goals are in conflict. For example, a business wants to provide great customer service. However it also has another goal to cut costs, it might put customers through complicated call loops (press 1 for scenario X, 2 for Y, 3 for Z, 8 for A etc) to reduce the load reaching humans (more costly), or staff call centers for less hours to save costs. Applying a POSIWID lens, this means the business’s purpose therefore was to maximize profit.
• A system has goals, but is unable to execute due to internal constraints or shortsightedness. For example, product velocity could be the stated, primary goal, but there are multiple internal processes and teams to align with, slowing down development. A POSIWID lens means that the system’s goal is to uphold internal structures and processes, vs product execution.

The clarity of POSIDWID is that if there are unintended outcomes of a system, one recognizes them, and starts working to fix those unintended outcomes.

Some possible critiques

• Mission matters: Over focusing on behaviors/outcomes could lead to missing out on examining the intentions of system design. Design and the purposes of the design matter too. Thinking aloud — if we were to go into the purpose of government systems — jumping into “what it does” could mean missing out on opportunities to define the purpose first, and then what actions fit into that purpose.
• Organizational complexity: Organizations are complex and large — it is hard to define sometimes what a system is singularly doing, as organizations are made up of different people, with different goals, doing different things. Even defining what the system is singularly doing is difficult.

The above is a rather skimmed view of POSIWID. There’s a whole world of papers on it that I’m excited to dive into.

[1] Stafford Beer was a operational researcher and management cyberneticist