https://blog.cabreraresearch.org/posiwid

“The Purpose of a System Is What It Does.”
This post is adapted from Chapter 4 of Flock Not Clock.
We must sound a cautionary note on evaluating whether capacity and mission align. Systems and management scientist Stafford Beer developed an important and popular systems thinking heuristic known by the acronym POSIWID: “The purpose of a system is what it does.” Beer regarded POSIWID as “bald fact” and a better starting point for understanding a system than a focus on designers’ or users’ intention or expectations. When assessing alignment, we need to focus on what the system actually does rather than its ostensible, original, or ideal purpose (since these often do not match).
Stafford Beer.
POSIWID has other important implications. It means that we need to think differently about how much control we really have over complex systems. Where capacity systems consist of many subsystems integrated into a system of systems, we want to look at them individually and collectively and ask:
- What is the system’s stated (ostensible) purpose?
- What is the system’s behavior?
- What does that behavior say about what the system’s purpose is?
- Is there alignment between the actual and ostensible purpose?
- If not, what is the system’s structure?
- How can we alter the structure to drive new behavior?
In Activity 4.2, you can see the value of POSIWID thinking. It flips the system and its purpose on its head. Instead of looking at the results of a system as problematic, you look at the results of the system as designed or by design. The worse the result, the more clear the value of POSIWID thinking. Take, for example, a company that is bleeding cash: you might look at this as a problem (and of course it is), but for a moment consider that everything about that company—all of its internal systems—are actually really good at spending money. This flips the problem on its head. We can now look for processes, cultural morays, and other parts of the system that are good at burning cash. …