If you're reading this, you're probably familiar with the theory: if we distribute authority, clarify roles, and adopt transparent decision-making processes, conflict will reduce. Power struggles are a function of hierarchy; remove the hierarchy and we remove the problem.

Those of us working inside new forms of organising, including those informed by Holacracy and Sociocracy, know the reality is more complex. Conflict does not disappear. It changes form. It becomes subtler, procedural, often more ambiguous, and sometimes harder to name. In the cases that I'll outline here, we see the limitations of process-driven and structural solutions:

• issues of constitutional interpretation become a proxy for disputes over legitimacy;

• truth-seeking processes frequently fail in conditions of mistrust;

• governance processes stall because relational preconditions were missing;

• peacebuilding is needed alongside governance.

In an environmental movement organised through a self-organising system, we’ve been living with the protean nature of conflict for many years. What follows are a few patterns we’ve observed, including ways in which governance processes themselves can be co-opted or weaponised under stress.

In this article:

1. Weaponising process

In a governance-based system, authority flows through clearly defined roles, domains, and constitutional rules. That clarity is powerful. But in conflict, it can also become the terrain of struggle.

In one prolonged dispute, what began as disagreement over strategy and messaging shifted into arguments about interpreting processes in the constitution. A governance decision — involving the expiry of a mandate and the status of a circle — became the focal point. Some experienced it as an automatic outcome of the system’s rules. Others experienced it as an intentional act by identifiable individuals.

Threads of 20+ comments unfolded dissecting wording, interpreting sub-clauses, debating technicalities. What started as a relational breakdown became a procedural contest. The constitutional machinery became the battleground.

In some self-organising systems, interpretive authority for the constitution is explicitly assigned — for example, to a role responsible for clarifying process and ruling on its application, with defined escalation pathways. Where such a function is absent or unclear, questions of interpretation can themselves become a source of conflict.

Similar dynamics surfaced elsewhere: objections in elections that were technically framed around role fit but carried deeper political charge; disagreements over which circle held mandate authority for messaging or narrative; debates about whether strategic decisions were “in line with” agreed plans. Process became the arena in which mistrust played out.

Nothing in the system was “broken”. It was functioning exactly as designed. But process had become a proxy for a deeper struggle over trust and legitimacy.

As explored in Legitimacy is Key, based on the same organisation as considered here, constitutional authority and perceived legitimacy are not the same thing. A move can be procedurally valid and still feel politically weaponised.

2. Can we handle the truth?

In polarised environments, the call for “truth” becomes magnetic. After one painful governance conflict, several participants insisted that “the truth must be told” — for example, about who was responsible for a particular outcome. Others insisted that the accounts circulating were factually incorrect and inflammatory.

The debate became forensic. What exactly happened? Who held authority at that moment? Was a deadline extension requested? Was it properly logged? Did a decision occur by system default, or by human intervention?

Even if a shared timeline could have been agreed, it would not have restored trust. What was really at stake was not only what happened, but who would be blamed.

This pattern surfaced beyond that single episode. In other contexts, allegations of bullying or exclusion were contested with competing accounts. Deep listening processes were criticised by some as relativising harm; by others as being abandoned too quickly in favour of prosecution.

Sometimes participants in a conflict try to draw a moral boundary between error and bad faith, distinguishing between sincere misperception and deliberate misinformation. Yet once mistrust has hardened, even that boundary becomes contested.

We have come to suspect that “discerning and telling the truth together” is important, while only realistically achievable on a foundation of trust. Paradoxically, the shared pursuit of truth can also help build that trust — but only when it is not framed as prosecution.

Without relational safety, truth-seeking becomes positional warfare.

3. Structural sophistication versus human reality

We have attempted to use deep listening processes. We have objection testing; mandate clarity; election processes; escalation pathways; a constitutional backbone with people to guide its use. In theory, a highly evolved governance stack.

And yet, in moments of entrenched mistrust, these tools are prone to stalling.

In one meeting, a proposal to develop a unifying narrative for funders broke down not over substance but over suspicion. One circle declined to share its draft concept because it feared being undercut. Another insisted it already held the mandate. The conversation froze into stasis.

In another context, participants pushed back at a coordinator, who they felt was overplaying her mandate by both setting an agenda without consultation and taking the facilitator role in a meeting. In election processes, objections multiplied and facilitators struggled to determine whether they were principled or positional.

The infrastructure existed. The relational preconditions did not.

It became clear that our systems encode decision-making processes, but they cannot manufacture trust.

As discussed in Legitimacy is Key, structures provide scaffolding. But legitimacy lives in the space between people.

4. Governance without peacebuilding

Holacratic and Sociocratic systems are explicit about authority, domains, and decision rights. They are less explicit about what one participant called “tribe space”: people meeting simply as humans, not as role holders.

In earlier phases of our collective work, people often bonded through shared experience and space. They had time to eat meals together. As activity became more structured and mediated through formal roles and online coordination, those informal bonds thinned.

When conflict later emerged, there was no reservoir of relationship to draw upon.

One contributor suggested that peacebuilding must precede conflict resolution. That practices of relationship — regular check-ins, shared storytelling, informal connection — are not optional extras but the foundation upon which governance rests.

Similar questions are increasingly being explored elsewhere in the self-management ecosystem. Programmes such as Evolving Collective Leadership focus explicitly on the capacities needed to stay connected across difference and transform tension into collective learning.

To be an activist, she suggested, is to be a peacebuilder. Without that foundation, even beautifully designed systems struggle.

5. The limits of distributed authority

In state-level peace processes, leverage exists: presidents, courts, formal enforcement. In decentralised movements, there is no higher authority to compel reconciliation.

If factions retreat into grievance, there is no constitutional “parent” to force them back into dialogue.

Distributed authority reduces domination. It does not remove the need for courage.

In one particularly painful episode, an individual subject to a formal complaints process experienced the procedure as deeply unjust. The process followed formal organisational pathways, including protections for complainant anonymity. Yet the absence of direct dialogue with those raising concerns left a lingering sense of scapegoating — what someone described, starkly, as a “Lord of the Flies” dynamic.

Whether or not that characterisation was fair, the perception itself revealed a deficit of relational containment.

No governance document can substitute for the human experience of being seen and heard.

6. Lessons from experience

Beyond hierarchy, conflict does not disappear. It surfaces:

• in procedural interpretation;

• in contests over legitimacy;

• in moralised appeals to truth;

• in the gap between structure and relationship.

The temptation is either to double down on process (“if only we applied it correctly”) or to abandon it in frustration.

Our experience suggests a third path:

• Identify the missing preconditions for existing processes to function.

• Invest deliberately in peacebuilding and relationship practices.

• Develop light-touch accountability that avoids blame and shame.

• Hold open the possibility that discerning truth together remains necessary — but only on the foundation of trust.

In other words, governance is necessary but insufficient. The assumption behind many organisational designs is that if we can get the structure right, the organisation will function predictably. But organisations are not machines. They are networks of human relationships, perceptions, identities and stories. Structure matters enormously, but it cannot substitute for trust, legitimacy or connection.

The deeper work — the uncomfortable, slow, unmandated work — is learning how to remain in relationship under strain. And perhaps that, ultimately, is how we move beyond the mechanistic instincts to which we have become acculturated.

If something in this piece landed — a pattern you recognise, a question it raises about your own system, our Experiments & Questions is a monthly drop-in where you can bring exactly that. Not a training session, not a sales conversation. A small group, an experienced practitioner, and whatever is real for you right now.

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