# Viable System Model ## The Idea in Brief Any organisation that survives has the same five functions, whether it knows it or not. Stafford Beer's model maps these: operations that do the work, coordination that prevents conflict, control that allocates resources, intelligence that scans the environment, and policy that sets direction. When one is missing or broken, the system drifts toward failure. When all five work together, you get viability—the ability to adapt and survive. --- ## Key Concepts ### The Five Systems **System 1: Operations** — The units that actually do the work. Departments, teams, factories. Each one should be viable in its own right, with its own feedback loops and autonomy. **System 2: Coordination** — The mechanisms that prevent operational units from colliding. Standards, schedules, shared protocols. Without it, System 1 units optimise locally at each other's expense. **System 3: Control** — The internal management function. Sets resource allocation, monitors performance, enforces rules. Looks inward at how operations are running. **System 4: Intelligence** — The external-facing function. Scans the environment, spots opportunities and threats, thinks about the future. Looks outward at what's changing. **System 5: Policy** — The identity function. Sets purpose, values, direction. Mediates the tension between System 3 (internal focus) and System 4 (external focus). Makes the hard trade-offs. ### Recursion Here's the elegant part: each System 1 unit is itself a viable system, with its own Systems 1-5. A division contains departments; each department contains teams. The same structure applies at every level. This recursive quality means you can apply the model to a team, a company, or a nation. ### The System 3-4 Tension The hardest balance in any organisation. System 3 wants stability, efficiency, control of the present. System 4 wants change, adaptation, investment in the future. Without System 4, you ossify. Without System 3, you fragment. System 5 exists to hold the tension. --- ## Implications **In diagnosis:** When an organisation is failing, ask: which system is broken? Often it's System 4 (no one's scanning the environment) or System 2 (coordination has collapsed). **In design:** Don't build organisations that lack any of the five. A startup with no System 3 will chaos itself to death. A bureaucracy with no System 4 will miss the next wave. **In your own work:** You are a viable system. Operations (doing the work), coordination (scheduling), control (managing energy), intelligence (learning, networking), policy (knowing your purpose). Which one needs attention? --- ## Sources - [[The Brain of the Firm]] — Beer's original articulation of VSM - [[The Heart of Enterprise]] — The philosophical companion; viability as the test of organisational design - [[The Unaccountability Machine]] — Dan Davies uses VSM to explain why modern institutions fail --- ## See in Notes - [Pace Layers](https://www.anishpatel.co/pace-layers/) — Different parts of a system change at different speeds; respect the rhythm - [Two Halves Of Trust](https://www.anishpatel.co/two-halves-of-trust/) — Trust requires both honesty and structure; they feed each other