From Control to Coherence
Leading and governing in a world that won’t stay still.
My interest in governance began as I watched boards and leaders in action, mostly in the nonprofit world. I was fascinated by the patterns of behavior, the interplay between board members and staff, and especially by what was left unsaid. The board I knew best was that of the nonprofit where I spent the first fourteen years of my career.
By the time I came around, the organization was thirty years old. Nearly all the board members were major donors. Most had been introduced to the organization by the founding president, a charismatic figure who had been a masterful story-teller and fundraiser. The organization had prospered financially in the 1990s but by the early 2000s, it was struggling: declining funding, aging constituency, and significant internal conflict on how to approach the challenge.
The board’s approach was one of conservation. It seemed to me that they wanted to preserve the organization as they had found it. They wanted to continue donor events that had been successful in the past, regardless of data that showed declining effectiveness. They were convinced that the operating model could be renewed, if we could just “crack the fundraising nut.” If I recall correctly, I worked alongside six VPs of development.
To the board, the form of the organization seemed to matter more than its work. It wasn’t malice or ego; it was fear – the fear of losing what seemed the core form of the organization. The fear of trying new things. Fear of empowering stakeholders who were different.
I remember one board member, a very successful businessman and one of the kinder souls on the board saying “if we can just get the engine humming, it will run for another generation.”
I often found myself, alongside several of my colleagues, arguing for strategic pivots, especially for listening better to voices from the periphery. Looking back, I see clearly that I spoke too much, listened too little, and often acted from a combination of hubris and fear. I acknowledged too little the board members’ fears and didn’t see them as humanly as I could have.
When I eventually stepped away from the organization, this tension between conservation and evolution was at the heart of my decision. I’d lost faith that the organization could change.
Looking back, I see that governance born of fear tightens its grip just when it needs to open its hands. Organizations, projects, and structures are a means to an end, not the end themselves.
What if governance isn’t about saving or preserving the institution but about sensing what wants to stay alive through us in this moment?
Rejecting the Machine View
This isn’t the only time I’ve observed a mode of governance that takes a machine-like approach to organizations. All too often, the undercurrent seems to be “if we can just get the structure right, then we can just sit back and watch the engine hum.” Such well-tuned organizations appear easy to evaluate – dollars raised, constituents served, programs launched…
I’ve seen “humming” organizations. They are a sight to behold. But I have come to see that such humming comes not primarily from structure, but from the health of the relational web of the organization (which enable healthy, nimble structures). Healthy organizations have internal cultures that value self-awareness, positive conflict, and clear communication. Externally, such organizations are in constant dialogue with all their stakeholders, always listening and learning. And perhaps most importantly, they recognize that failure comes when the preservation of institutions, roles, programs, or traditions becomes the overarching goal.
All of this nests into broader questions about how social change happens. I’ve appreciated the growing body of evidence that rejects the machine view – that change can be achieved through targeted, controlled interventions that are easily evaluated. But metrics can only measure motion, not meaning. The deeper hum comes from the health of the relational web. As Megan Stevenson argues, “social change is hard to engineer”.
This is hardly a novel idea. A growing number of voices push us in this direction. But it is easier to identify machine-like patterns of governance in theory than it is to overcome them in practice.
Finding Agency amidst Fragmented Governance
A number of recent conversations with peers have deepened my understanding and reminded me that I’m not alone in asking how to approach governance in all aspects of life more relationally.
These conversations also reminded me how essential it is to see beyond current structures and programs, and to acknowledge how power – often unarticulated power – warps our vision and decision making. This often leads us into deeply fragmented approaches that keep our vision focused on one part of the ecosystem, rather than the whole. How can we govern for this moment and let go of what no longer serves us?
I’ve recently been part of several conversations that all revolve around the theme of how governance can fragment when an organization in a capital or large city or another country attempts to engage with local partners. Well-intentioned leaders struggle to balance external pressures from funders and others that can clash with what makes the shared work in the local community successful. For example, a well-intentioned policy from the capital required everyone on project motorbikes to wear helmets for safety. But in a conflict-affected community, hiding one’s face created fear and distrust. This is just one example of the complex and evolving dynamics of a situation that can complicate governance.
Governance has to make more space for this complexity. This is even more important if there is wide geographic or cultural space within the ecosystem. How can governance give greater agency to those closest to the situation? How can it avoid giving undue importance to questions that are important to the center and/or to funders, when those decisions can undermine the relationships at the core of social change? How might governance be less fragmented and more holistic?
To govern well in such complexity is not to impose uniformity, but to cultivate coherence across difference.
From Control to Coherence
Looking back, it is clear that the organization where I spent my early career was in what resilience scientists would call the “omega phase”. This is a fancy way of saying that it was probably time to ask if it was time for the organization to compost and the best elements be reborn. In many ways, this is where the organization went as it merged a few years later with another organization and lost much of the identity and infrastructure that had defined it in an earlier age.
But the deeper question underneath was one of control. The motivations of the board members were not bad, but they were filled with fear and clung to a calculus of control. They are not alone. I can see how I’ve brought this spirit into board rooms where I’ve been a board member, not to mention innumerable other governance situations in my professional, personal, and family life. It is deeply human, especially in the modern world, to desire to control all the variables.
It fascinates me how this applies not just to human life, but to the broader biological and natural world around us where the ongoing quest for coherence is central to life. Margaret Wheatley drew this linkage three decades ago when she stressed that life is more a quest for coherence than control. Nature teaches us.
As I hold all of this with curiosity, these are the questions I keep returning to:
What if governance isn’t about saving an institution but about sensing what wants to stay alive through us and our agency?
What if our task in governance is not to preserve structures at all costs, but to preserve the relationships and values that can move through disruption into renewal?
What if governance begins where we admit that we can’t be the hero who single handedly holds everything together?
What if we acknowledge that we all struggle with our desire for control and our inability to achieve it? How can we acknowledge the ways that this wounds us and learn to lean better into one another as we seek coherence together?
Wow, the part where you said the form seemed to matter more than the work realy stood out to me. It's wild how common that 'conservation' mindset is, driven by fear of change. Thanks for articulating this so clearly, it’s such an important point for any organisation today.