The Purpose of a System Is What It Does
To understand the current purpose of an ideology, religion, or political system, the original intentions of its founders or thought leaders are irrelevant.
Your intentions are irrelevant. Only your impact counts.
“Agile actually means ...”
“Lean originally means ...”
Yeah, whatever. That’s not relevant when judging what people do with it now.
Remember Management By Objectives (MBO)?
Peter Drucker never intended MBO to be about bonuses for financial targets. He would turn in his grave if he knew what MBO has become over time. And yet, nearly everyone these days sees MBO as managers setting targets for other people and incentivizing them accordingly. This has become the de facto purpose of MBO.
Agile never intended to revolve around agile frameworks, coaches, conferences, and certifications. And yet, here we are. The emergence (and decline) of the agile industrial complex is what we all ended up with. That is what Agile has become, what almost everyone perceives it to be.
Likewise, lean thinking was never intended to be just about delivering things faster to customers. And yet, I can wallpaper my house with all the quotes from consultants who say that better flow equals more/earlier value and unthinkingly praise faster and more frequent customer deliveries. That is what Lean seems to be now.
FREE WEBINAR!
Dear Scaling enthusiast,
On the 24th of June ScaleUpNation hosts a (free) webinar about ‘The Art of Scaling’ from a Board perspective.
ScaleUpNation has 300 plus alumni, all specialists in the ScaleUp world. This webinar is for executives interested in ScaleUps: Founders, Investors, Advisors, C-level and (future) Board members.
Hope to see you on the 24th of June at 13.00 CET/1.00 PM
I’m a big believer in the POSIWID principle in systems thinking:
The Purpose of a System Is What It Does
When a company claims it supports sustainability and a transition to renewable energy sources, but at the same time collects subsidies for fossil fuels, then we can rightfully say the organization’s purpose is the greenwashing of energy policy.
When a religion preaches “love and peace,” but we see the actual behavior of its people show violence and suppression, then the purpose of that system is aggression and domination. It’s clearly not love and peace.
When a political party continuously talks about “freedom,” yet it enacts policies that exclude certain groups of people and takes away their fundamental human rights, it’s obviously a repression party, not a freedom party.
When a community claims its ideology intends A, but everyone can see that the actual behaviors of community members are B, then the system’s purpose is B, not A.
Historical intentions are interesting, but not relevant.
Sure, as a writer, I love understanding the etymology of a word. For example, “gay” originally meant cheerful and carefree. The word “awful” once meant “full of awe,” inspiring reverence or fear, as in “the awful majesty of God.” And “artificial“ was once interpreted as “skillfully made, artful,” related to works of art.
But these meanings are irrelevant to understanding what people mean when they use these words today in 2026. Similarly, to understand the current purpose of an ideology, religion, or political system, the original intentions of its founders or thought leaders are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the actual behavior of people who use those words now.
The Purpose of a System Is What It Does
Your intentions are irrelevant. Only your impact counts.
Jurgen, Solo Chief
P.S. This is an adaptation from an article on the unFIX blog.
Fact-Check With AI Before Publishing
If ignorance takes ten seconds to fix, your writing needs a better starting point. AI can expose stale claims, bad takes, and recycled thinking before you publish.
As a historian, I am deeply interested in the history of a movement, and I appreciate that you acknowledge that this can be important.
I love the message, though, that the current impact is what really matters, not the original intentions.
I have found that the best history does not examine just intent, but also impact. Maybe we can agree that "original intentions" are irrelevant (and often misstated for political reasons), but it IS worth studying the historical impact of ideologies, religions, and political systems? What did the founders actually do, and what impact did they have on the people and systems around them? That's the kind of history I enjoy reading.