The Politics of Process
“Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does,” the often quoted statement goes.1 In business, this phrase gets quoted when a company is experiencing an issue. They are not meeting sales goals, missing critical handoffs between departments, or some other problem has jolted the business leadership out of their focus on the products and drawn their attention to the systems producing those outcomes.
Humans are outcome-oriented. We want results we can see. We want to change the outcome if we get a result we don’t like, and the way we change the result is generally to change the process. In the business context, outcome orientation is easy enough. We tweak systems to deliver better outcomes.
I think there’s something analogous here to our notion of the medium is the message. While McLuhan’s point was principally about communications media and information, I think an analogy can be drawn to the process/outcome conversations:
As the medium is the message, the process is the outcome.
One of the areas I’ve been thinking about the process/outcome orientation in lately is our politics. As I watch our political debates, they usually go something like, “The other side is the enemy of liberty, and my side is your only hope to preserve our society.”
But on both sides of our political debates, I think you can see a lot of confusion between processes and outcomes. When an outcome I want is supported by a process, I am very for that process. When an outcome I want is contrary to a process, I want to throw it out.
The recent Supreme Court ruling about affirmative action at Harvard and UNC bears this out. Alan Jacobs, writing on his blog, does a great job of drawing out how the various opinions and dissents are talking past each other and debating whether Racial inequality is better or worse than it used to be. This is ultimately an outcome-oriented discussion. Jacobs writes,
Only Roberts, writing for the Court, doesn’t make any such statement, because in his legal reasoning it doesn’t matter. Racial inequality could be better than it used to be, about the same, or worse — it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is whether the policies employed by Harvard and UNC are legally justifiable. That’s his whole argument.2
Do the processes pass legal muster, or should we take their outcomes into account? The question before the court is very specific, but as outcome-oriented creatures, it’s very easy for us to get distracted.
Another area you can see this discussion play out in is free speech. Should we consider the content of speech when deciding if it’s permissible in open forums? I think this lively debate between Sarah Isgur and Jonah Goldberg, which starts with Sarah’s premise that a Supreme Court ruling that Nazis should be allowed to march through a predominantly Jewish town in the United States, is a high point of free speech freedoms in the US, draws out a lot of these points exceptionally well. This is a long debate (only a bit over 25 minutes at 2x speed!), but I think it’s well worth it to grapple with these questions.
The core of the argument again comes down to outcomes. Should speech we don’t like be banned, and who is the we that get’s to determine what that speech is?
Another facet of this is to reflect on how we carry ourselves when a process delivers an outcome we don’t like. There’s a bit of self-reflection that must go on to figure:
Do we call the whole process corrupt?
Do we need to tweak the process a bit?
Is the process sound, and do we just need to be ok with the fact that the process sometimes leads to outcomes we don’t like?
Do we become whole-hearted defenders of everything the process delivers?
Typically we fall into the first or the last option in public discourse, but there are other options. The rise of extreme identification with political parties further complicates the situation: we flip back and forth depending on who’s party is in charge of the process at the time and react accordingly.
Our innate tendency to focus on outcomes rather than processes has far-reaching implications across business, politics, and free speech. As humans, we desire visible results and often overlook the significance of the underlying processes that shape those outcomes. The adage "Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does" holds, reminding us to critically assess the processes driving the outcomes we seek. Whether in business, politics, or public discourse, we must strive for a nuanced understanding, realizing that sometimes the process needs adjustment.
At the same time, we must accept that outcomes may not always align with our preferences. By broadening our perspective and resisting the temptation to categorize the entire process as flawed or embracing it wholeheartedly, we can engage in more constructive discussions and foster meaningful change in our society.
Social image: Photo by Danil Shostak on Unsplash