Systems at Work: The Invisible Goal - Why Your Work Feels Misaligned
Most people think success comes from working harder. But in systems, direction matters more than intensity. This post isn't about motivation. It's about precision.
You don’t need more effort—you need clarity on what your work is actually moving toward.
In Part 1, we talked about systems as dynamic structures: flows, buffers, feedback loops—the underlying architecture that explains why things behave the way they do at work. But there's a deeper layer, often invisible and unspoken, that drives all of it: the goal of the system.
As Donella Meadows wrote, the goal is one of the most powerful leverage points in any system. It shapes how feedback loops operate, what flows get prioritized, and which parts of the system grow or decay. Without understanding the goal, everything else is surface noise.
But here's the problem: goals aren't always visible. In fact, in many real-world systems—especially in teams and organizations—they're often obscured or assumed.
Let’s take an example.
Imagine a school system. On paper, its goal is to "educate and empower students."
But look at what it consistently produces: standardized test scores, compliance with rules, a conveyor belt of curriculum pacing.
A teacher who takes time to mentor a struggling student might be seen as falling behind. A creative lesson that doesn’t align with test prep might be quietly discouraged.
Over time, the teachers who thrive are the ones who optimize for test performance—not necessarily deep learning.
So what’s the real goal? Not empowerment. Not curiosity. The system has come to optimize for scores.
And that changes everything.
The same principle applies at work.
What is a goal, really?
A goal isn’t a slogan. It’s not what the slide deck says. And it’s not whatever the team declared in last quarter’s OKR planning.
A system’s true goal is what it consistently produces. It’s the pattern of behavior over time. It’s what survives across leadership changes, reorgs, and new strategies.
If a team says their goal is "delighting users" but consistently ships rushed features to meet quarterly targets, then the real goal is speed, not user delight.
Meadows puts it simply:
“If the behavior of the system reveals a different goal than the one you proclaim, then the system has a different goal.”
So how do you identify the real goal?
Watch what gets rewarded.
Look at what survives pressure and conflict.
See where the system directs energy when tradeoffs appear.
Ask: what gets protected at all costs?
Let's take an example.
A senior engineer joins a fast-growing org. During her onboarding, the Director of Engineering tells her: "We care deeply about product excellence here. Clean code, performance, quality—these are non-negotiables."
But in her first sprint planning, the Head of Product says: "Let’s try to squeeze in a few more features—we need to show progress to leadership."
In weekly check-ins, the topic of conversation is always: "How many tickets did we close? What’s the ETA for the new launch?"
When she proposes refactoring a brittle service, her manager replies, "Let's park that until Q3—we really need to focus on this roadmap for now."
At first, she tries to push back. She documents the long-term cost. She flags risks. She nudges for a test coverage target.
But no one bites. The work gets deprioritized. The team’s praise goes to whoever unblocks the most features.
By the end of the second quarter, she doesn’t argue anymore. She picks up the tickets that ship fast. She learns to move with the current, not against it.
The mismatch wasn’t in values—it was in what got chosen when values clashed with velocity.
She’s not underperforming—she’s aligning to what the system actually wants.
And the Director? He sees the tension.
He believes in quality. He believes in craft. But when timelines conflict with quality, he assumes quality can catch up later. The trade-offs feel temporary to him—strategic, even.
In one 1:1, he says: "Look, I know this isn’t ideal. We’ll make space for tech debt cleanup in the next planning cycle. Right now we just need to get this out the door."
He’s juggling roadmap demands, headcount asks, and executive optics. In his world, slipping a launch could cost more than slipping on quality—at least in the short term.
He’s not trying to be hypocritical. He’s trying to survive a different layer of the system.
She wonders if he sees what she sees—or if he’s just playing a longer game she’s not privy to.
What’s going on?
Let’s pull back and see the system as a whole—not just the engineer and her manager, but the organizational structure around them.
Why does the Director act this way, even when it contradicts what he says he values? Because he’s embedded in a layered system where upstream forces constrain his choices.
Let’s map some of those layers:
Flows: The organization is set up to flow updates upward—metrics, launches, visible progress. These updates drive executive attention and budget decisions. If your work contributes to that flow, it gets seen and protected. If it doesn’t, it’s often invisible.
Buffers: The system has very little slack. Headcount is frozen, deadlines are fixed, dependencies are brittle. This means the Director operates with minimal buffer. If quality work adds risk or delay, it often gets cut—not because it lacks value, but because there's no room for it.
Feedback Loops: Every successful launch triggers a loop of praise, promotion, and momentum. But every delay—even if justified—triggers escalations, review meetings, or reputation risk. These loops train leaders over time: protect the flow, avoid friction.
Rules: There may be formal review processes, delivery targets, or funding milestones that are structured to reward throughput. These rules create incentives to prioritize work that "counts" on dashboards—even if other work is more meaningful.
Information Flows: The Director doesn’t always see the downstream effects of rushed features—customer complaints, degraded reliability, internal friction. That information either gets filtered on the way up, or it arrives too late to influence planning.
Paradigm: At the highest level, there may be a cultural paradigm that equates speed with success, and polish with indulgence. In that context, “product excellence” is more of a branding term than a functional goal.
So even though the Director values quality, he's navigating:
A lack of buffer to absorb good intentions,
A flow structure that rewards visible motion,
Feedback loops that punish friction,
And a paradigm that defines success by urgency.
He’s not just reacting to pressure—he’s behaving exactly as a well-trained node in a system built for velocity.
This is why smart, thoughtful people often make decisions that look misaligned from the outside. The system is doing exactly what it's built to do.
Most dysfunction isn't due to incompetence. It’s due to goal misalignment—between what people believe the goal is, and what the system actually optimizes for.
First Principles: Why this happens
Organizations rarely design their goals intentionally.
They emerge from history, habit, and incentive structures.
Sometimes, the original goal made sense—but it never got updated.
Other times, there is no coherent goal—just the illusion of one.
In these cases, the system defaults to:
What’s easiest to measure (story points, uptime, OKRs)
What’s politically safe (pleasing execs, avoiding failure)
What’s emotionally satisfying (feeling productive)
When the real goal is invisible, people act on proxy goals.
And proxy goals are dangerous.
They optimize the visible at the expense of the valuable.
But here's the leverage point: change the goal, and the system often reorients itself.
Take the case of a non-profit that had been quietly optimizing for donor satisfaction. Every program, every report, every metric was built around how things looked to the people funding them. Impact on the ground was secondary.
Then a new executive director came in and made a quiet but radical change. She redefined the goal: optimize for beneficiary outcomes, not donor optics. That single shift cascaded.
Suddenly, programs were redesigned with feedback loops from the communities being served. Field staff were empowered to change plans midstream based on real-world conditions. Some glossy quarterly reports got leaner—but the field metrics got sharper.
At first, some donors balked. But others leaned in, appreciating the honesty. Over time, donations recovered—but this time, aligned with the new telos.
All because the system finally knew what it was actually trying to do.
Change the goal, and you change what the system defends, adapts, and amplifies.
A Mental Model: Teleology (Aristotle)
In classical philosophy, telos means “end” or “purpose.”
Every system has a telos—even if it’s never spoken.
The question isn’t whether your team has a goal.
The question is whether that goal is worth aligning to.
Engineers feel misaligned not because they’re confused—
but because they’re often correctly perceiving that the system’s telos is hollow.
A Word from Charlie Munger: It’s Always Incentives
Charlie Munger put it bluntly:
“Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome.”
What we call a system’s “goal,” Munger would simply call its incentives.
And once you understand how incentives shape behavior—intentionally or not—you start to see why systems act the way they do.
People aren’t confused. They’re responding—rationally—to what the system rewards.
It’s not that the Director doesn’t care about quality. It’s that he’s surrounded by metrics, reviews, promotions, and roadmaps that reward speed. That’s the real incentive structure. And over time, incentives beat ideology.
This is why Munger urged leaders to carefully design systems that reward what they actually want—not just what they can measure.
“Never, ever think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.”
Goals. Telos. Rewards. Feedback loops.
They’re just different languages for the same truth: systems don’t run on values—they run on incentives.
So what do you do?
You can’t always change the goal.
But you can:
Name the real goal. Say it out loud.
Ask: “What’s actually being optimized here?”
Design feedback loops that reinforce the right outcomes.
Refuse to blindly align to metrics that mask deeper failure.
And if the telos is toxic? You may have to decide whether to stay in that system at all.
Because every hour of work is a vote for the goal—spoken or not.
You don’t need to fight the system. You just need to see it clearly. Then choose your moves with intention.**
Most people chase alignment. But the real question is: alignment to what?