Designing for Emergence
Updated: 7 days ago
“Meaning is far less effective without the Structure that can turn it into reality.”
The Poster
For many years, I took it for granted that a serious organization should clarify and articulate its Values, Vision, Mission, and Purpose. I practiced this myself, attended workshops and courses built around these ideas, participated in discussions about what organizations stood for and where they were headed, and saw how much effort it could take to find the right words. The reasoning seemed persuasive: if an organization could clarify what mattered, what it was trying to accomplish, and the future it wanted to move toward, that clarity should influence the direction it ultimately took.
Over time, however, I began noticing a recurring pattern in my wife's work as an HR manager in private companies and in a government ministry. In several of these organizations, senior management decided to define or refine the organization's Values, Vision, Mission, and Purpose, often when the organization was already struggling to move forward. The organization had not failed and, in some cases, had grown impressively in earlier years, but growth had slowed. The same approaches that had once driven growth were now producing less progress, and overall it seemed to have reached a ceiling: still viable yet unable to generate the next period of prosperity that leadership hoped for.
These were not merely cosmetic exercises. Leadership invested considerable time, discussion, professional assistance, and resources in clarifying where the organization should go next, ultimately producing carefully formulated Values, Vision, Mission, and Purpose. Yet as I continued to follow these organizations through my wife's HR experience, I repeatedly encountered outcomes very different from what I had expected. People continued working largely in the same roles, authority relationships, incentives, decision processes, and familiar patterns of cooperation, while the new statements described different priorities and a future that was supposed to be different.
For a long time, the simplest explanation seemed to be that such exercises were largely symbolic, management language with little influence on what people actually did. Yet the more I investigated Meaning, the less satisfying that explanation became. People can organize large parts of their lives around what genuinely matters to them, accepting hardship, delaying rewards, changing careers, and sometimes making extraordinary sacrifices for a Purpose or future they consider important. I know this not only from observing others but from the way I have organized much of my own life. Values, Vision, Mission, and Purpose are therefore not necessarily empty declarations; when what they express genuinely matters to people, they can powerfully influence human choices.
The puzzle therefore remained: if what genuinely matters to people can influence their choices so profoundly, why can an organization invest serious effort in reconsidering what it values and where it wants to go, yet afterward continue along essentially the same trajectory?
Direction
The first distinction may seem obvious once stated, yet I had overlooked it for years. An organization can officially declare what ought to matter without those things necessarily mattering to the people within it. Giving an idea formal status as a Value, Vision, Mission, or Purpose therefore does not tell us how strongly it will influence the real choices through which the organization actually moves.
A management team can agree on a Vision, refine and approve it, and make it the organization's official Vision. But several weeks later, when someone faces a difficult choice, does that Vision actually enter the decision? Does it influence what deserves priority, what cost seems worth accepting, which possibility should be abandoned, or where additional effort should be invested? If not, the organization may possess a Vision as a document without that Vision contributing much to the Direction created through thousands of everyday choices.
The same applies to Values, Mission, and Purpose. People may understand the organization's Values perfectly well yet give greater weight to other things that matter to them when choices must be made. A Mission may describe something worth accomplishing, but neither Mission nor Purpose contributes much to Direction unless what they express becomes significant enough to influence everyday priorities and choices.
This is where Meaning becomes important. Meaning is experienced significance: something actually matters to someone. Purpose can orient action because something matters, while Shared Futures can connect present contributions to a future people expect to create together. Values, Vision, Mission, Purpose, and Shared Futures can all contribute to Direction, but formal declaration alone does not make them influential in the choices that shape that Direction.
This gap between declarations and real life became much clearer when I looked at my own family. I grew up in Kibbutz Tzuba, where equality, mutual responsibility, and shared obligations were not mainly ideas we discussed; they were simply how life was organized. My grandmother had lived in a kibbutz since 1925, and my mother helped establish Tzuba in 1948, yet I cannot remember either of them sitting with me to explain why the kibbutz mattered, what larger Purpose its way of life served, or why its unusual demands were worth accepting. We spoke relatively little about these Values, yet lived them intensely. Elsewhere, I encountered almost the opposite: people and organizations could speak passionately about equality and similar ideals while embodying them far less in how they actually lived and worked.
That contrast revealed something important. Structure and everyday life can transmit a way of life, including habits, expectations, responsibilities, and relationships that embody particular Values, without anyone repeatedly explaining them. I learned much of that way of life simply by growing up within the system. But living those practices did not necessarily mean I consciously understood the deeper Meaning behind them, the future they were intended to serve, or why their demands should remain worth accepting when circumstances changed. That understanding has to develop within each individual and become part of their Internal Complexity, their integrated understanding, experience, and judgment; it cannot simply be inherited like rules, institutions, or routines. Looking back, I suspect we assumed that because the way of life was being transmitted, the Meaning behind it would be transmitted with it.
Years later, I realized that I had left the kibbutz not because I rejected its people or its way of life, but because I was searching for a Purpose that felt meaningful for the future I wanted to build. The great purposes that had animated earlier generations, including establishing a state and building an egalitarian society through collective life and work on the land, were tied largely to a future they had already helped bring into being. I was already living within much of what they had struggled to create. What had once been a powerful Shared Future for them had become, for me, largely the world I had inherited.
The broader implication is that Direction and Structure must remain sufficiently aligned as people and circumstances change, and either may need to be renewed when that alignment weakens. Buildings, rules, committees, responsibilities, and mechanisms of mutual support can continue across generations, while the significance people experience behind them changes. What once embodied a compelling future can gradually become an inherited arrangement whose original Purpose is less clearly understood or less meaningful to those living within it. For Values, Vision, Mission, Purpose, and Shared Futures to continue contributing to Direction, each generation must develop and renew its own understanding of what matters, why it matters, and what future its present choices are intended to help create.
This brings us back to the poster with which we began. Declaring Values, Vision, Mission, and Purpose does not, by itself, establish the Direction they are intended to support. They begin to shape Direction when what they express becomes meaningful enough to influence real choices and remains meaningful as people and circumstances change. But this raises a harder question: what if people already care deeply, hold powerful Values, share a compelling Mission, and are willing to work and sacrifice for the future they believe in? If Direction is already strong, should that not be enough to turn commitment into durable collective Capability?
Compatibility
Before Degania was established, many of the ingredients considered necessary for agricultural success were already present in earlier attempts. Jewish agricultural villages, known as moshavot, had been established with land and substantial financial support, yet many struggled economically. Kinneret Farm, created as an agricultural training farm for pioneers, brought professional management and modern agricultural knowledge, together with pioneers who possessed extraordinary motivation, powerful Values, and a Vision of a very different future. Yet it too struggled to achieve the economic results it sought.
Then, in 1909, seven pioneers drawn from the worker groups around Kinneret Farm were given land at Umm Juni and allowed to organize the undertaking differently. They managed their own work and took collective responsibility for its practical requirements and results rather than operating under the previous managerial arrangement. The group finished the year with a profit and then dispersed, but another group followed the same basic organizational principle and, in 1910, began building the permanent community that became Degania, the first kibbutz. History is never a controlled experiment, so we should not claim that Structure was the only thing that mattered. But both groups arrived at Umm Juni already possessing many of the elements associated with strong Direction, together with agricultural knowledge, commitment, and access to the basic resources needed to work the land. What changed most visibly was the Structure through which their effort and responsibility were organized. The comparison therefore suggests something more modest but also more important: Direction alone was not enough; durable collective Capability also required a Structure sufficiently compatible with that Direction.
The later history of the kibbutz reveals the same relationship, but in reverse. The kibbutz Structure did not stand still: over the decades, technology advanced, management became more professional, agriculture and industry grew increasingly sophisticated, and organizational Capability accumulated far beyond what the founders had possessed. Yet the Shared Future that had given the founding generations such powerful Direction was changing as well. The establishment of Israel in 1948 did not complete the kibbutz Mission or end its social aspirations, but one enormous Shared Future had moved substantially from aspiration into reality. Later generations therefore inherited an increasingly capable organizational system, while the question of what future justified continuing to live and work in this distinctive form became more difficult to answer.
This is the paradox that matters: a system can become increasingly efficient, professional, and technologically advanced while becoming less clear about the future that makes its distinctive obligations and constraints worth accepting. Capability is not Direction. Before Degania, powerful Direction lacked a sufficiently compatible Structure; with the emerging kibbutz, the two became more mutually supportive and collective Capability could accumulate. Later, much of that Structure became increasingly sophisticated while parts of the Direction that had once animated it were fulfilled, transformed, weakened, or insufficiently renewed.
Direction and Structure therefore perform different functions and neither can substitute for the other. Direction influences what people are willing to pursue, accept, and sacrifice for, while Structure shapes how those commitments can become collective reality. The relationship also works in reverse: the authority, responsibilities, incentives, and relationships people experience every day can reinforce what the organization claims to stand for or gradually contradict it. What matters, therefore, is sufficient compatibility between the future people are trying to create and the Structure through which their differentiated contributions are connected. Because both Direction and Structure change over time, that compatibility may have to be created, preserved, and sometimes rebuilt, which brings us to the challenge of design.
Figure. A conceptual illustration of the proposed relationship between Shared Direction and Operational Capability in the kibbutz movement, 1910-2010. The curves and their intersection are qualitative and schematic and do not represent measured historical indices.
Design
Part of the design problem may be easiest to see in a young organization. When only a few people are building something together, much of its Structure has not yet taken shape, so the same people may be deciding both what they are trying to accomplish and how they will work together to accomplish it. Direction and Structure can therefore develop together. As the organization grows, however, both may become deeply established, and changes in the organization or its environment can eventually make elements that once supported one another less compatible.
IBM's entry into personal computing offers a useful example. The company had built an extraordinarily capable organization around mainframe computing, while the emerging PC business required a substantially different way of operating. Rather than forcing the new activity immediately through its established Structure, IBM created a relatively autonomous unit in Boca Raton that could operate differently. The existing Structure was not defective; it embodied decades of accumulated Capability and success. The problem was that a substantially different future required a Structure more compatible with it.
This helps clarify the design problem. If an organization says initiative matters while meaningful decisions remain concentrated elsewhere, or depends on experimentation while every failed attempt carries unacceptable personal consequences, its Structure pulls against the Direction it is trying to pursue. Yet the reverse is equally important: changing reporting lines, incentives, procedures, authority, or ownership does not by itself establish a new Direction if people do not find the future those changes are intended to serve meaningful. A new Structure cannot substitute for Direction any more than a new Vision can substitute for a compatible Structure.
The issue is therefore not which is easier to change or which matters more, but whether Direction and Structure remain sufficiently compatible. The design task is to keep examining that relationship and, when compatibility weakens, work on Direction, Structure, or both. Leaders cannot manufacture Meaning or determine exactly how people will respond, but they can shape many of the relationships through which individual choices become collective activity. They can work on the conditions from which a future may emerge, but they cannot determine exactly what those conditions will ultimately produce.
Emergence
Even when Direction and Structure are sufficiently compatible, the resulting future cannot be fully specified in advance. People continue to learn, choose, interpret, disagree, cooperate, and respond to circumstances that no plan can fully anticipate, while technologies, markets, institutions, competitors, and opportunities change around them. When differentiated people retain real autonomy and Capability, their interactions can give rise to collective Capability and possibilities that none of them could create independently. Because that Capability emerges from interactions among autonomous participants, its exact form cannot be predetermined.
Leadership is therefore not about controlling outcomes, but about shaping the conditions from which they may emerge. Leaders need not simply wait for the future to happen, but neither can they manufacture it by specifying every action. They can influence some of those conditions, including the Direction people pursue, the Structure through which they act, and the ways differentiated contributions are connected and supported. Direction and Structure are not the only conditions that matter, but they are among those leadership can intentionally shape.
This brings us back to the poster with which we began. Articulating Values, Vision, Mission, and Purpose can be useful because it helps an organization clarify what matters and what future it wants to pursue. But articulation alone does not create Direction, and it does not change the Structure through which people act. For these ideas to influence the organization's trajectory, they must become meaningful enough to shape real choices, while the Structure through which people act must be made and kept sufficiently compatible with the future those choices are intended to create. Even then, success is not guaranteed.
So we remain with the central question: can we design emergence or prosperity? Engineers do not design the phenomenon of flight itself; they design aircraft capable of flying. In much the same way, we cannot directly design the collective Capability that may emerge from an organization or community, nor can we guarantee prosperity. But we can design for emergence by creating and renewing conditions in which differentiated people, meaningful Direction, and compatible Structure are more likely to give rise to collective Capability that none could create alone. Degania offers one historical illustration of how such Capability can contribute to prosperity.
Engineers design aircraft for flight. Leaders can design organizations and communities for emergence, creating conditions in which greater collective Capability, and with it greater prosperity, becomes more likely.
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* I strive to stay true to the facts and the reality they reveal. If you find an error or see a need for clarification, your insights are welcome.
See you soon,
Nimrod
Dr. Nimrod Israely writes on the structural foundations of prosperity and human systems, and is the CEO and Founder of Dream Valley and Biofeed.
P.S. Fresh-fruit exporters: We will be closing some of our most attractive 2027 EU retail programs in October. If you are interested in participating, contact me before then.
P.P.S. Previous column: “Why Meaning Makes Us More Capable, and Why It Is Part of Our Evolutionary Heritage”
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