Perfectly Designed Errors: Why Your Systems Are Giving You Exactly What They’re Built For

One quote changed the way I look at nearly everything in my life.

Its direct, honest, and incredibly high agency.

The late W. Edwards Deming said:

“Your systems are perfectly designed to give you the results you are getting.”

When I first heard that quote it was like I downloaded a mental upgrade. I was running “systems thinking 2.0”. It has helped me improve the performance of businesses, connections with loved ones, and learning. It has given me a whole different way to think about crafting a life, not just living one.

It’s a brilliant way of thinking about systems. It helps us realize that we hold the keys to performance. Additionally, it reminds us that we need to focus on the raw materials entering the system, not the outputs, to make a change.

Inputs = Outputs

In systems, you have inputs (what you give it) and outputs (what it gives you). It’s a very simple concept, but incredibly liberating and impactful once we start thinking about life in those terms.

How the Cookie Crumbles… or Turns Into a Pile of Mush

Let’s illustrate this concept with baking. Baking has very clear inputs (ingredients, heat, time) and outputs (a delicious baked good).

If you're baking cookies, your inputs are:

• Ingredients (sugar, flour, etc.)

• Heat

• Time

• Discipline not to eat the cookie dough

Your recipe is the standard process used to achieve your cookie output. That’s why recipes are so coveted—they’re instructions for how to combine the right inputs to achieve the desired output.

Here’s a great chart that shows how adjusting the quantity of inputs can change the result.

Now, we can debate which cookie is truly “perfect” (because that’s subjective).
But what is objective is the math of process inputs and outputs.

This Applies to All Systems

The same logic goes far beyond cookies. Once you start looking for inputs and outputs, you’ll see them everywhere. And once you identify a system’s inputs, you can become its architect—making adjustments to produce the outcome you desire.

Mowing the lawn:
The inputs are gas, equipment, human energy to operate the equipment, travel pattern, and time. The output is a cut lawn, achieved with X time and X effort.

Human connection:
The inputs are time and attention spent with willing (← key word!) persons or groups. The output is friends and loved ones.

The list goes on infinitely—and that’s the best part.
It means you will always have some degree of agency over the outputs you reap.

Better Inputs = Better Outputs

Concepts that apply to everything you do are probably worth knowing about.

In terms of high-leverage ideas to think about and apply, I tend to put “applies to almost everything” pretty high on the list.

It can be a little tricky to decide where to focus your efforts when you’re gazing into infinite possibilities, so here are a few questions to help you brainstorm:

• What bugs you?
  This is a classic way to identify where to focus. If an output is bugging you, that can be a great place to target improvement.

• What is chronically underperforming your expectations?
  Similar to the first question, but viewed through a different lens.

• What works really well? And why does it work well?
  This is good to understand so you don’t accidentally change what’s already working.

• What is something you would like to improve on? Are your inputs aligned with that goal?
  You can use this kind of framework to grow.

There you go! These represent a great place to start.

– MB