Eight to Late

A couple of weeks ago I bought an anthology  of short stories entitled, An Exploration of Unintended Consequences, written by a school friend, Ajit Chaudhuri. I started reading and couldn’t stop until I got to the last page a couple of hours later. I’ll get to the book towards the end of this piece, but first, a rather long ramble about some thoughts which have been going around my head since I read it.

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Many (most?) of the projects we undertake, or even the actions we perform, both at work and in our personal lives have unexpected side-effects or results that overshadow their originally intended outcomes. To be clear, unexpected does not necessarily mean adverse – consider, for example, Adam Smith’s invisible hand. However, it is also true – at least at the level of collectives (organisations or states) – that negative outcomes far outnumber positive ones. The reason this happens can be understood from a simple argument based on the notion of entropy – i.e., the fact that disorder is far more likely than order. Anyway, as interesting as that may be, it is tangential to the question I want to address in this post, which is:

Is it possible to plan and act in a way which anticipates, or even encourages, positive unintended consequences?

Let’s deal with the “unintended” bit first. And you may ask: does the question make sense? Surely, if an outcome is unintended, then it is necessarily unanticipated (let alone positive).

But is that really so?  In this paper, Frank DeZwart, suggests it isn’t. In particular,  he notes that, ” if unintended effects are anticipated, they are a different phenomenon as they follow from purposive choice and not, like unanticipated effects, from ignorance, error, or ideological blindness.”

As he puts it, “unanticipated consequences can only be unintended, but unintended consequences can be either anticipated or unanticipated.”

So the question posed earlier makes sense, and the key to answering it lies in understanding the difference between purposive and purposeful choice (or action).

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In a classic paper that heralded the birth of cybernetics, Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow noted that, “the term purposeful is meant to denote that the act or behavior may be interpreted as directed to the attainment of a goal-i.e., to a final condition in which the behaving object reaches a definite correlation in time or in space with respect to another object or event.”

Aside 1: The reader will notice that the definition has a decidedly scientific / engineering flavour. So, it is not surprising that philosophers jumped into the fray, and arguments around finer points of the definition ensued (see this sequence of papers, for example). Although interesting, we’ll ignore the debate as it will take us down a rabbit hole from which there is no return.

Aside 2: Interestingly, the Roseblueth-Wiener-Bigelow paper along with this paper by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts laid the foundation for cybernetics. A little known fact is that the McCulloch-Pitts paper articulated the basic ideas behind today’s neural networks and Nobel Prize glory, but that’s another story.

Back to our quest: the Rosenblueth-Wiener definition of purposefulness has two assumptions embedded in it:

a) that the goal is well-defined (else, how will an actor know it has been achieved?), and

b) the actor is aware of the goal (else, how will an actor know what to aim for?)

We’ll come back to these in a bit, but let’s continue with the purposeful / purposive distinction first.

As I noted earlier, the cybernetic distinction between purposefulness and purposiveness led to much debate and discussion. Much of the difference of opinion arises from the ways in which diverse disciplines interpret the term. To avoid stumbling into that rabbit hole, I’ll stick to definitions of purposefulness / purposiveness from systems and management domains.

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The first set of definitions is from a 1971 paper by Russell Ackoff in which he attempts to set out clear definitions of systems thinking concepts for management theorists and professionals.

Here are his definitions for purposive and purposeful systems:

“A purposive system is a multi-goal seeking system the different goals of which have a common property. Production of that property is the system’s purpose. These types of systems can pursue different goals, but they do not select the goal to be pursued. The goal is determined by the initiating event. But such a system does choose the means by which to pursue its goals.”

and

“A purposeful system is one which can produce the same outcome in different ways…[and] can change its goals under constant conditions – it selects ends as well as means and thus displays will. Human beings are the most familiar examples of such systems.”

Ackoff’s  purpose(!) in making the purposive/purposeful distinction was to clarify the difference  between apparent purpose displayed by machines (computers) which he calls purposiveness, and “true” or willed (or human) purpose which he calls purposefulness. Although this seems like a clear cut distinction, it falls apart on closer inspection. The example Ackoff gives for a purposive system is that of a computer which is programmed to play multiple games – say noughts-and-crosses and checkers. The goal differs depending on which game it plays, but the common property is winning. However, this feels like an  artificial distinction: surely winning is a goal, albeit a higher-order one.

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The second set of definitions, due to Peter Checkland, is taken from this module from an Open University course on managing complexity:

“Two forms of behaviour in relation to purpose have also been distinguished. One is purposeful behaviour, which [can be described] as behaviour that is willed – there is thus some sense of voluntary action. The other is purposive behaviour – behaviour to which an observer can attribute purpose. Thus, in the example of the government minister, if I described his purpose as meeting some political imperative, I would be attributing purpose to him and describing purposive behaviour. I might possibly say his intention was to deflect the issue for political reasons. Of course, if I were to talk with him I might find out this was not the case at all. He might have been acting in a purposeful manner which was not evident to me.”

This distinction is  strange because the definitions of the two terms are framed from two different perspectives – that of an actor and that of an observer. Surely, when one makes a distinction, one should do so from a single perspective.

…and yet, there is something in this perspective shift which I’ll come back to in a bit.

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The third set of definitions is from Robert Chia and Robin Holt’s classic, Strategy Without Design: The Silent Efficacy of Indirect Action:

“Purposive action is action taken to alleviate ourselves from a negative situation we find ourselves in. In everyday engagements, we might act to distance ourselves from an undesirable situation we face, but this does not imply having a pre-established end goal in mind. It is a moving away from rather than a moving towards that constitutes purposive actions. Purposeful actions, on the other hand, presuppose having a desired and clearly articulated end goal that we aspire towards. It is a product of deliberate intention“

Finally, here is a distinction we can work with:

• Purposive actions are aimed at alleviating negative situations (note, this can be framed in a better way, and I’ll get to that shortly)
• Purposeful actions are those aimed at achieving a clearly defined goal.

The interesting thing is that the above definition of purposive action is consistent with the two observations I made earlier regarding the original Rosenbluth-Wiener-Bigelow definition of purposeful systems

a) purposive actions have  no well-defined end-state (alleviating a negative situation says nothing about what the end-state will look like). That said, someone observing the situation could attribute purpose to the actor because the behaviour appears to be purposeful (see Checkland’s definition above).

b) as the end-state is undefined, the purposive actor cannot know it. However, this need not stop the actor from envisioning what it ought to look like (and indeed, most purposive actors will). 

In a later paper  Chia, wrote, , “…[complex transformations require] an implicit awareness that the potentiality inherent in a situation can be exploited to one’s advantage without adverse costs in terms of resources. Instead of setting out a goal for our actions, we could try to discern the underlying factors whose inner configuration is favourable to the task at hand and to then allow ourselves to be carried along by the momentum and propensity of things.”

Inspired by this, I think it is appropriate to reframe the Chia-Holt definition more positively, by rephrasing it as follows:

“Purposive action is action which exploits the inherent potential in a situation so as to increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for  those who have a stake in the situation”

The above statement includes the Chia-Holt definition as such an action could be a moving away from a negative situation. However, it could also be an action that comes from recognising an opportunity that would otherwise remain unexploited.

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And now, I can finally answer the question I raised at the start regarding anticipated unintended consequences. In brief:

A purposive action, as I have defined above, is one that invariably leads to anticipated unintended consequences.

Moreover, its consequences are often (usually?) positive, even though the specific outcomes are generally  impossible to articulate at the start.

Purposive action is at the heart of emergent design, which is based on doing things that increase the probability of organisational success, but in an unobtrusive manner which avoids drawing attention. Examples of such low-key actions based on recognising the inherent potential of situations  are available in the Chia-Holt book referenced above and in the book I wrote with Alex Scriven.

I should also point out that since purposive action involves recognising the potential of an unfolding situation, there is necessarily an improvisational aspect to it. Moreover, since this potential is typically latent and not obvious to all stakeholders, the action should be taken in a way that does not change the dynamics of the situation. This is why oblique or indirect actions tend to work better than highly visible, head-on ones. Developing the ability to act in such a manner is more about cultivating a disposition that tolerates ambiguity than learning to follow prescribed rules, models or practices.

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So much for purposive action at the level of collectives. Does it, can it, play a role in our individual lives?

The short answer is: yes it can.  A true story might help clarify:

“I can’t handle failure,” she said. “I’ve always been at the top of my class.”

She was being unduly hard on herself. With little programming experience or background in math, machine learning was always going to be hard going.  “Put that aside for now,” I replied. “Just focus on understanding and working your way through it, one step at a time. In four weeks, you’ll see the difference.”

“OK,” she said, “I’ll try.”

She did not sound convinced but to her credit, that’s exactly what she did. Two months later she completed the course with a distinction.

“You did it!” I said when I met her a few weeks after the grades were announced.

“I did,” she grinned. “Do you want to know what made the difference?”

Yes, I nodded.

“Thanks to your advice, I stopped treating it like a game I had to win,” she said, “and that took the pressure right off.  I then started to enjoy learning.”

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And this, finally, brings me back to the collection of short stories written by my friend Ajit. The stories are about purposive actions taken by individuals and their unintended consequences. Consistent with my discussion above, the specific outcomes in the stories could not have been foreseen by the protagonists (all women, by the way), but one can well  imagine them  thinking that their actions would eventually lead to a better place.

That aside, the book is worth picking up because the author is a brilliant raconteur: his stories are not only entertaining, they also give readers interesting insights into everyday life in rural and urban India. The author’s note at the end gives some background information and further reading for those interested in the contexts and settings of the stories.

I found Ajit’s use of inset stories – tales within tales – brilliant. The anthropologist, Mary Catherine Bateson, once wrote, “an inset story is a standard hypnotic device, a trance induction device … at the most obvious level, if we are told that Scheherazade told a tale of fantasy, we are tempted to believe that she, at least, is real.” Ajit uses this device to great effect.

Finally, to support my claim that the stories are hugely entertaining, here are a couple of direct quotes from the book:

The line “Is there anyone here at this table who, deep down, does not think that her husband is a moron?” had me laughing out loud. My dear wife asked me what’s up.  I told her; she had a good laugh too,  and from the tone of her laughter, it was clear she agreed.

Another one: “…some days I’m the pigeon and some days I’m the statue. It’s just that on the days that I’m the pigeon, I try to remember what it is like to be the statue.  And on the days that I’m the statue, I try not to think.” Great advice, which I’ve passed on to my two boys.

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I called Ajit the other day and spoke to him for the first time in over 40 years; another unintended consequence of reading his book.

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