The most effective and broadly-understand articulation of this idea is the phrase, “the purpose of a system is what it does”, often abbreviated as POSIWID. The term comes to us from the field of cybernetics, and the work of Stafford Beer, but this is one of those wonderful areas where you really don’t have to read a lot of theory or study a lot of the literature to immediately get value out of the concept. (Though if you have time, do dig into the decades of research here; you’ll enjoy it!)

The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as it was designed to. What to change to the system. Change its desired outcome, its incentives to be successful. That where the correction is needed.