The Purpose Of The System Is What It Does (Not What You Want It To Do)
Ask any executive what the purpose of their sales team is, and they’ll likely scoff like you just asked what color the sky is: The answer will be some variation of “producing revenue”.
Duh, right?
Not so fast.
“The purpose of the system is what it does” is a pithy quote from legendary cyberneticist Stafford Beer that deserves unpacking:
An expensive car, nominally, is a system designed for the purposes of getting you from point A to point B (presumably in style). In reality, if this expensive car spends more time in the shop than it does on the road, then the real purpose of said-expensive car is to consume attention and resources to be maintained.
A friend who tells you how important you are to them is the nominal model of a system that places great importance in the value of friendships, but if every time you reach out to them they put you off or ignore you, then the real purpose of the system is to make you feel important without having to actually perform the functions a good friend would.
The punchline is this: When a system has a stated purpose and it diverges from its actual purpose, the latter is the product of the system, and thus proof positive of what the system actually is “for”
Take a sales team that indexes heavily on booking meetings - “we just need MORE. MEETINGS.” the sales task master berates week after week. The team will go out and book meetings, alright, but whether those meetings lead to revenue or not (the nominal purpose of the system) is quite another story.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a list of things I’ve seen reps do when their jobs are threatened lest they “book more meetings”:
Send a calendar invite to somebody they reach on the phone who says “circle back with me in a few months” and then brag in Slack about the fact that they booked a meeting.
Send a calendar invite to somebody who they reach on the phone who says “yeah this is not for me”
Beg people at conferences to book meetings, even after the person confirms that they are, in absolutely no uncertain terms, completely uninterested in what is being sold
Offer people gift cards or consumer electronics in order to take meetings
The purpose of the system is what it does - not what you want it to do.
CN