Pre-purpose

A term we invented - see other words in our glossary of terms

This neologism acknowledges the unconscious, implicit or tacit accord at an early stage in a project.
It assumes that our sense of reality is emergent and co-created.
Often, the purpose of shared actions is ill-defined or overshadowed by prevailing conditions.
Then, at a later stage in proceedings, someone defines the agenda or task in a way that seems appropriate to the majority.
This can be agreed as the 'purpose'.
Pre-purpose describes the 'future purpose' or 'latent purpose' that has yet to be noticed or identified explicitly.
The word reminds us that the languaging process is enormously powerful.
It enables people to steer the course of events in ways makes them more, or less, useful.
Humans often negotiate processes by discussing their purpose.
However, this does not guarantee a close accord between purpose and outcome (c.f. Merton, 1936; Anscombe, 1957).
Metadesign teams may need to self-orchestrate their collective, somatic, and so-called ‘right-brain’ knowledge (c.f. McGilchrist, 2009).
In these self-organising teams of emergent-thinkers, participants may find it unhelpful, or even impossible, to agree on a clear pretext or 'purpose'.
For this reason, we coined the term ‘pre-purpose’.
It reminds us that spontaneous impulses may conceal latent opportunities that have yet to be reduced to a 'purpose'.