From the cup to the lip, there is many a slip. The fact that applied meta-systems frameworks are as yet largely unrealized and exist primarily upon paper as ideas in waiting, does not mean that practical efforts cannot be undertaken to implement frameworks, or parts of frameworks, with the idea that unsuitable or undeveloped parts of the whole cannot eventually be substituted by better designs.

The practical implementation of frameworks may even proceed a-theoretically, and can prove to be heuristically productive of new theoretical and applied insight not to be gained by structured, top-down approaches. In fact, most solutions are practical solutions, and meta-system frameworks that cannot be rendered practical and efficacious, cannot be successful as proposed solutions to problems.

Practical systems must be regarded in the main as shoe-string and boot-strap solutions, as usually except in the most coveted of worlds (and excepting the US military and NASA), ends usually far exceed the means to accomplishing them. Thus making due with what one has, and making the most of a little bit, becomes the operating standard.

Practical frameworks provide us, informally at least, a set of standards by which we can finally judge the success of any undertaking or systems project. Practical frameworks are functional frameworks par-excellence, and standards used to gauge the success of working systems of all kinds, like achieved efficiency, longevity, etc., are standards that can be used to guide the development of such practical frameworks in the long run and short-term. We refer generally to such development as functional streamlining--the achievement of an optimal solution to a complex  multivariate problem, including maximum possible efficiencies in functioning. Applied systems tend toward "equi-final" convergence in terms of streamlined functional solutions to practical problems to be met by such systems. I would argue that however blind natural evolutionary development may be, most evolution has occurred in terms of such adaptive streamlining of biological systems to specific environmental conditions.

Practical systems can be thought of therefore as controlled experiments--the control usually being the inherent limits and constraints set upon the development of such systems. They are thus to be seen as the best tools for hands-on learning and teaching. This learning may be formal and informal in terms of hands-on, experiential knowledge and expertise that comes with close working association with systems. We would probably trust an automobile mechanic who has 20 years of successful experience working with a certain car, more than we would trust one who received his diploma in an auto mechanic school a year before with certification in that same kind of car.

Indeed, it is practical solutions that count most in the world, and until a solution can be had in real terms, all the plans and designs on paper don't amount to much. People probably debated the possibility and practicality of human flight  centuries before someone actually achieved the practical feat of flying a machine. But once that happened, the aircraft and aeronautical industry never looked back and is today, less than a century later, shooting past the moon.

It is evident that rules of practice that people engage in everyday, hands-on problem solving, are fundamentally different from formal rules of form and theory that are often alleged to guide human behavior. A simpler way of saying the same thing is to remark that ultimately it does not matter how something is done, so long as it is done, and done well. Like typing or bicycle riding, or the composing of an symphonic masterpiece, we cannot always conveniently or adequately explain how things get done--we just know that they do by terms of their results. In fact, we do not really need to know necessarily the theory of what it is we are supposed to be doing, so long as we know how to do it and the job gets done.

I would suggest that practical applications of frameworks rely upon different capacities and more non-analytical methodologies and faculties of the brain, than formal or formalized frameworks. I would also suggest that practical application systems lend themselves more readily to a broader range of adaptation and capacity and to more human differences than frameworks that are more formally designed and organized. The challenge becomes of course marrying the formal with the functional, and the proper with the practical.

I can offer no prescription for the development of practical frameworks--each must work within a model of organization that best suits themselves in their own life-world. What can be said is that many tasks can be rendered more efficient in organization through routine-operationalization, but this should never come at the expense of or in lieu of development and new project focus. Thus, there seems always to be a trade-off and a balance to be effected, between doing things in a tried and true "time-tested" way and trying to learn to do things in a new way. We must always meet the world head one with a sense of openness to learning new things, and a sense of adaptive creativity in how we respond to things we encounter and implement new designs. But at the same time, sense of organization and operational management is important to achieve and maintain, if not compulsively, then at least punctually.