The Irony Of Improving Systems Design

I've been doing some thinking based on systems design (systems defined here in the broadest sense, beyond just computer systems and including ideas like service and administrative systems) and noticed what seems to be an irony when it comes to the quality of system design.

When it comes to system design, most systems are GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out), that is to say that if your inputs are all junk, then your outputs will be all junk. Using our integrative thinking model of TAO (Thinking, Action and Outcomes), using poor thinking will result in poor actions and subsequently poor outcomes. From a systems perspective, a designer would therefore design a system to constrict inputs such that 'Garbage' inputs in order to create an implicit or explicit form of rigor in the quality of the system's outputs. This is particularly important in large mission critical systems, where you don't want services to be disrupted by inputs which are inexact.

Fortunately or unfortunately, systems are inherently resistant to change. The natural inertia that results from controlling inputs and processes is originally intended to ensure quality and stability of the resulting outputs. However, over time, static systems will deteriorate, not only in the physical sense, but in the sense that the assumptions about the context in which the system operates will not remain static.

However, innovation is a necessary driver for making system models dynamic. The very input or change necessary to improve the system's processes would most likely be interpreted as 'Garbage' as the system isn't likely defined to accommodate this information. This is because the context shifted away from the original assumptions used to design the system.

This creates a dilemma as it relates to innovation. In order for a system to be dynamic, not to decay due to changes in the context in which the system operates, it requires thinking outside of the system's given parameters (a boundless feedback system). But thinking outside the system's given parameters is almost always framed as extraneous data or 'Garbage'. In order to incorporate a new idea requires flexibility in the system, but that flexibility usually comes at the cost of performance or stability.

The irony is, at the risk of sounding too recursive, that the best possible 'systems' are the ones that optimize the performance of all elements including those outside the system itself. That is to say, the best systems are not ecosystems, but organisms in bigger ecosystems.