What needs to happen in addressing the assumption of purpose
To successfully address the Assumption of Purpose—shifting from the mechanistic goal of “solving puzzles” to the systemic goal of “dissolving messes” and “designing”—practitioners must enact a radical shift in how they view goals, knowledge, and intervention.
Based on the collection of authors, here is what must happen to practically address and operationalize this shift:
1. Stop Solving the Wrong Problem (Avoid “Inverse Vandalism”)
Before attempting to fix a situation, you must stop treating the “mess” as a bounded “exercise” or puzzle.
- Avoid the Error of the Third Kind (E3): Ian Mitroff warns that the greatest danger is E3—solving the wrong problem precisely by drawing your boundaries too narrowly.
- Problem Finding over Problem Solving: Alan Kay argues that if you merely use expert knowledge to optimize a flawed status quo, you commit “inverse vandalism”. You must escape the current context and search for “What Is Actually Needed” (WIAN) to force a qualitative shift.
2. Expose the Actual Purpose (Apply POSIWID)
To change a system’s purpose, you must first accurately diagnose its current one.
- POSIWID: Stafford Beer dictates that “The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does”. You must completely ignore the stated mission, intentions, or rhetoric of the organization. By observing the actual, emergent behavioral outputs of the system, you uncover the true, often hidden, goals driving the mess.
3. Shift from Reactive “Problems” to Proactive “Desiderata”
The traditional assumption of purpose is reactive: you identify a negative state (a problem) and try to eliminate it to return to the status quo.
- Run Toward Desiderata: Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman argue that Systemic Design must be driven by Desiderata—the hopes, desires, and intentional aspirations for a better, ideal future. Design is proactive; it runs toward an ideal rather than just running away from a defect.
- Relationship-Maintaining over Goal-Seeking: Geoffrey Vickers adds that human systems are not simple “goal-seeking” machines that stop once a target is hit. Purpose must be reframed as “relationship-maintaining”—the continuous regulation and balancing of desired relationships over time.
4. Dissolve the Mess via Idealized Design
Russell Ackoff dictates that you cannot “solve” a complex mess analytically by cutting it into pieces, because the sum of the best solutions for the parts is never the best solution for the whole.
- Problem Dissolution: You must dissolve the mess by redesigning the system or its environment so the problem can no longer physically or logically exist.
- Idealized Design: To do this, Ackoff requires practitioners to plan backward. You must assume the current organization was completely destroyed last night, and then collaboratively design the ideal replacement system you would build right now, subject only to technological feasibility and operational viability. This breaks self-imposed historical constraints.
5. Elevate “Questioning Insight” (Q) over “Programmed Knowledge” (P)
Addressing the assumption of purpose requires abandoning the reliance on “experts.”
- Puzzles vs. Problems: Reg Revans notes that experts use “Programmed Knowledge” (P)—past facts, historical data, and established algorithms—to solve tame “puzzles”. But in complex environments, you face “problems”—intractable situations with no single right answer.
- Action Learning: Because past knowledge is useless in rapid change, leaders must elevate “Questioning Insight” (Q). This requires the admission of ignorance, the courage to pose fresh questions into the unknown, and a commitment to learning dynamically through trial, error, and the challenging friction of peer groups (the “Set”).
6. Use “Design Judgment” to Create the “Ultimate Particular”
Finally, the pursuit of purpose must abandon the scientific search for universal, objective “Truth.”
- The Ultimate Particular: Harold Nelson argues that design seeks to create the Real. The goal is to compose the Ultimate Particular—a specific, unique artifact, policy, or system perfectly tailored for a specific context and a specific group of people at a specific time.
- Phronesis: Because perfect information is impossible in wicked messes, you cannot rely on scientific deduction. You must use Design Judgment (phronesis, or practical wisdom) to synthesize aesthetics, ethics, and rationality, making compositional decisions that are “adequate” and life-enhancing rather than mathematically “optimal”.