In last week’s blog post I introduced the idea that self-organization is a powerful force in both the natural and the human worlds. I also introduced readers to the technocratic myth — that the wisest in the ways of science will be able to engineer businesses and societies to inevitable success. Critically, technocratic ideas cannot succeed because they are based on an out-of-date view of science — they rely on a traditional scientific paradigm which complexity science has shown invalid. Today’s technocrats, then, rely on pre-complexity mythology incapable of knowing what they do not know.

The issue of technocracy is critical within business. Technocratic assumptions, casually accepted, lie deeply buried and drive many assumptions for how business activities are expected to work. They also ensure that most doing business believe science will find universal ways of doing business to ensure success. Yet complexity makes clear such universal approaches do not and cannot exist.

The Technocratic Error Permeates Business

The technocrats discussed in my last post parachuted into Bali to, with colonial arrogance, create disaster. The example showed how self-organization is, inherently, a technocratic blind spot.

These errors, though, aren’t only found in colonial situations. Ron Johnson had run Apple Stores quite successfully before he was hired as CEO of JC Penneys. He brought to Penney’s an incredible arrogance — believing Apple had discovered universal answers for retail. Thus, he ignored policies which were in place — policies which had developed in self-organized ways to fit the culture of Penney’s customers. Once Johnson imposed his “best way,” results at JC Penney’s became far worse. He was CEO for just over a year before he was fired.

Many other executives struggle with the mere idea of there being value in self-organization. In fact, to be an executive today often means, inherently, to be a bureaucrat. There are few truly entrepreneurial CEOs.

Self-Organization & Chesterton’s Fence

Turning to Chesterton, we start with wisdom known as Chesterton’s Fence — an excellent expression of conservatism. DOGE and Elon Musk are clearly not conservatives as they do not comprehend the cautions in Chesterton’s Fence:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”^[1](emphasis added)

Wise conservatives know that change must happen AND also know errors in change wreak tremendous destruction — that revolutions replace what is horribly mediocre with things which are truly terrible.

Chesterton and Self-Organized Society

That a fence exists is a result of previous self-organizations. Yet self-organization is a potent force technocrats cannot comprehend. That leads us to the whole of Chesterton’s essay “The Drift from Domesticity” which starts with his fence as a caution against technocrats. From there the essay considers one self-organizing unit at the foundation of Western society — the household. Within his time Chesterton was responding to ideas that families were archaic constructs which science could replace with something better.

Among the traditions that are being thus attacked, not intelligently but most unintelligently, is the fundamental human creation called the Household^[1]

At the time, such ideas gained popularity with the appearance of success in the Russian revolution (its failures were not yet clear). The Russian revolution was inherently technocratic. Consider early ideas about families in the Soviet Union:

The Bolshevik government did not trust the nuclear family, believing it taught individualist, bourgeois values to children; they initially believed that government institutions could raise the millions of children orphaned by the Russian Civil War, and that these children could be inculcated with socialist values.^[2]

Chesterton trusted the value of self-organization in how children are raised in Western societies where each parent “is urged by a natural force which costs nothing and does not require a salary; the force of natural affection for his young, which exists even among the animals.”[3] What Chesterton particularly noted was that self-organization is natural within human societies and highly effective. As in nature, this organization relies on shared rules, individual agency, and negotiated constraints of individuals spread throughout society. Many of the rules parents follow are clear while others remain unspoken results of culture, religion, and history. On top of such rules, societies pass laws they believe needed to control more destructive human tendencies. What emerges is highly effective and highly cost-effective — and society benefits in the near- and long-term from well-raised children.

Had the technocrats of Chesterton’s time succeeded they would have created a system where “one harassed person has to look after a hundred children instead of one normal person looking after a normal number of them.” Imagine the emotional and human failure of such a bureaucratic system. Despite an abundance of metrics, society would get far worse results at far higher cost. In classic Chestertonian style, he sums up a great deal about self-organization with biting humor:

If you cut off that natural force, and substitute a paid bureaucracy, you are like a fool who should pay men to turn the wheel of his mill, because he refused to use wind or water which he could get for nothing. You are like a lunatic who should carefully water his garden with a watering-can, while holding up an umbrella to keep off the rain.

When companies replace self-organization with paid bureaucracy they often end up carefully watering their gardens by hand while holding an umbrella to keep off the rain.

One part of technocracy has changed, though, from Chesterton’s time. Knowing they cannot have infinite resources for paid bureaucracies, DOGE relies on a utopian belief that artificial intelligence creates bureaucracy for free. In other words, they believe government will be effective with bureaucracies run by AI, Hallucination seems to go hand-in-hand with technocratic belief..

The Messy-ness of Self-Organization Is Not Disorder

One of the challenges with self-organization is that it can appear messy to technocrats who believe orderliness is next to godliness. Businesses tend to hold this same belief and become unable to see how organization can appear messy yet be  highly efficient. In fact, one of the truths from complexity science is that human reality is messy.

We should, then, apply the famous dictum about democracy to self-organization — that democracy is the worst possible way to run a country except for all the others.^[3]  Organizations which are somewhat messy are often highly efficient and effective. After all, the world charges a premium for organizations to appear always orderly.

Note that whether an organization is considered orderly or disorderly is also a matter of perception. Dedicated bureaucrats have unusual demands for orderliness. Wise managers are more perceptive. In my company we allowed project messy-ness where it was necessary for success. This bothered a few clients yet almost every client eventually remarked on our ultimate professionalism. The term  “professional” sadly too often means well organized, Yet work is only professional which is highly effective — when it achieves a great deal which matters in success. The messy-ness our clients sometimes saw was critical to our work’s extraordinary effectiveness.

Clarifying the Difference between Experts vs Technocrats

My last post may have left a misconception that experts are technocrats and that technocrats are experts. Neither is true. Critically, many and possibly most technocrats are not experts. Instead they believe they don’t need to know specific fields to run business or society based on science (whatever that means). This is the technocratic leap of faith.

Thus, Elon Musk’s DOGE technocracy is clueless about how the US government works and even appears to celebrate their lack of understanding. As a result, DOGE dashes off to make drastic changes based on an ideology (libertarian adjacent) believing society is best run by “engineers, who would rule by numbers.” .^[0] 

Today’s technocrats believe numbers, logic, and data reveal everything which matters. This is, of course, a silly idea which has failed in business for well over 70 years. While data and numbers are extraordinarily helpful, they are not enough. Let’s use George Box’ admonition that “All models are wrong, but some are useful” — except apply it to to data. All data, after all, is a model and abstraction eliminating real world messy-ness. In this way, all data is wrong but, fortunately, some data is quite useful.

Technocrats become particularly onerous because they believe only they know the right goals for business or society. Within a complex world, though, valid and useful goals must emerge as time progresses and cannot be stated in advance. Experts understand this and bring their outstanding skills to help businesses and society achieve goals. For example, a city manager in a US city is an expert in the ways cities work and also aware of the many unintended consequences which result from policies and actions. City managers serve citizens and their politicians. As goals arrive through political and social processes, a city manager may set off to achieve these goals or may advise ways in which the goals might backfire or be unattainable. None of that happens in a technocratic dictatorship where, as with DOGE, wholesale changes are made based only on what DOGE theorizes.

Managing Amid Self-Organization 

How, then, might we manage while relying on self-organization?

Managers must not allow chaos to reign based on an absolute faith in self-organization. Instead, we seek a savvy balance:

• Self-organization reveals what those closest to the details of working envision. For this reason, we must always remain aware of what we can learn from how people naturally do their work. After all, they see details and connections we cannot see.
• As managers in a company or as company owners, though, our vision courses over different territory as we are deeply involved with issues like financial obligations, major strategic hopes, or major trends within the markets and customers. Managers see many things which others do not see.

A manager’s job, then, is to balance these points of view. We must learn from how people naturally self-organize. We must also consider the whole of the situation. And, then, we must choose ways to act. Should we bring in outside structures with rules and bureaucracy? Or would we discover an unusually effective approach through self-organization ? Should what we learn from self-organization be made into bureaucracy? Or should we take steps to enable self-organization and also ensure it does not suffer death by bureaucracy? Should we… The list of “should we” question is endless and there are no universal or absolute answers. Science cannot tell us what to do.

Wise managers, then, stay as far away from technocrats as possible. They also listen to what self-organization reveals and take great care before imposing outside ideas like the technocratic rice growing methods which failed so badly in Bali.

Until next time, be well. And self-organize with wisdom.

©2025 Doug Garnett — All Rights Reserved

Through my company, Protonik LLC, I consult with companies as they design and bring to market new and innovative products. I am writing a book exploring the value of complexity science for driving business success. Protonik also produces marketing materials including documentaries, websites, and blogs. As an adjunct instructor at Portland State University I teach marketing, consumer behavior, and advertising.

You can read more about these services and my unusual background (math, aerospace, supercomputers, consumer goods & national TV ads) at www.Protonik.net. Roughly once a month, Shahin Khan and I discuss current issues in marketing on our podcast The Marketing Podcast available on Google, Spotify, the OrionX website, and Apple Podcast. 

[0] From Jill Lepore article.

[1] Chesterton, G. K. (1946) [1929]. “The Drift from Domesticity”. The Thing (Reprint ed.). London: Sheed & Ward. p. 29.

[2] Wikipedia Listing for Wikipedia Listing for Family in the Soviet Union

[3] In debt to Winston Churchill who observed on 11 November 1947 that ‘Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’