The D/S bright line

A one-question test for telling Destination problems (what outcome counts as better, and who has the right to define or revise it) apart from System problems (who or what carries the work, through which handoffs and checks), so teams stop arguing about ownership when the real gap is an unsettled definition of success.

Your food co-op has burned five board meetings on the ordering software. Who administers it. Whether the produce buyer or the volunteer coordinator holds the password. Whether the Tuesday delivery window belongs to the store manager. Voices rise. Then someone asks what the software is actually for, and half the room says keeping member prices low, and the other half says buying from farms within 40 miles. Nobody had ever settled that. The password fight was a different disagreement wearing a costume.

Ask one question. Is the sticking point what outcome would count as better, or who has the right to define, veto, or revise that outcome? If yes, you are in Destination, and the next move is to name the outcome, its floors, and who holds revision authority, before anyone touches the software again. If the outcome and its criteria are already settled and the argument is about who or what carries the work, through which handoffs and checks, you are in System, and you build roles and routing. What changes when you get it right is that the argument stops repeating itself. Two meetings become 20 minutes. Sometimes both are honestly contested, and then you settle the outcome first, because a system built on an unsettled destination just relitigates it in a new room.