On The Hierarchy Of CloudsOn Cities That Steer Themselves
Tracing the lines of grief, care and collective power through Mexico City’s cycling transformation
On The Hierarchy Of CloudsBefore we plant anything
A few questions to see if trust is already here
On The Hierarchy Of CloudsLife Notes 2: Losing, choosing, and moving anyway
And somewhere along the way, I stepped off the expected path (though I don’t even know if I was following it)
On the Hierarchy of Clouds is a space for exploring the structures — seen and unseen — that shape our lives. It’s about systems, governance, and the slow work of change. About how we build, break, and reimagine the institutions around us.
On The Hierarchy Of CloudsOn Cities That Steer Themselves
Tracing the lines of grief, care and collective power through Mexico City’s cycling transformation
On The Hierarchy Of CloudsBefore we plant anything
A few questions to see if trust is already here
On The Hierarchy Of CloudsLife Notes 2: Losing, choosing, and moving anyway
And somewhere along the way, I stepped off the expected path (though I don’t even know if I was following it)
On the Hierarchy of Clouds is a space for exploring the structures — seen and unseen — that shape our lives. It’s about systems, governance, and the slow work of change. About how we build, break, and reimagine the institutions around us.
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This is the third post in a series of ‘reimagining governance - some brief thoughts and observations’.
A wildfire breaks out.
Emergency services respond, but they don’t act fast enough. Multiple agencies have conflicting protocols. Local communities organise mutual aid. Social media spreads misinformation. A group of Indigenous fire practitioners, who had warned about this exact risk for years are ignored.
By the time the fire is contained, it’s clear the real failure wasn’t response time; it was governance.
Governance assumed the crisis could be managed through structure and hierarchy. But the world didn’t work that way. It moved in networks, unpredictably, through relationships and knowledge that sat outside formal institutions.
Governance is failing because it assumes control is possible.
The world is complex, nonlinear, constantly shifting. Governance is still rigid, top-down and obsessed with predictability. The result? A growing gap between how power is structured and how the world actually works.
If governance keeps failing in complexity, maybe complexity isn’t the problem - governance is.
Governance always makes a choice:
• Hierarchy over networks.
• Stability over adaptability.
• Risk avoidance over resilience.
Governance assumes that top-down decision-making is more effective than decentralised coordination. But in reality, centralisation often slows down response times, disconnects decisions from lived reality and creates bottlenecks.
The trade-off?
• Governments retain control, but lose the ability to respond quickly.
• Institutions maintain authority, but ignore local intelligence.
• The system protects itself, but fails the people moving through it.
When governance assumes control we see:
• Disaster responses that reinforce bureaucracy instead of helping people.
• Governance paralysis when problems don’t fit existing structures.
• Decision-making removed from the people who actually experience the impact.
But governance could be designed differently:
• From rigid control to adaptive systems → Governance as a learning system that evolves over time.
• From top-down to polycentric → Multiple, overlapping centres of decision-making, where power is distributed.
• From certainty to sensing → Governance that listens and responds to reality rather than forcing reality into pre-existing models.
What This Might Look Like in Your Context
• In local government: decentralising small budget decisions to communities
• In a nonprofit: treating service delivery as co-designed, not top-down
• In a global organisation: designing learning loops instead of annual reviews
These are not radical acts.
They’re simple shifts; away from control, toward relationship.
• Where is your governance system pretending the world is more predictable than it is?
• How does control slow down or even block solutions in your field?
• What governance models already exist that thrive in uncertainty—and what can we learn from them?
Take five minutes today. Map a moment where your governance structure blocked flow. Then ask: what would trust have done differently?
This is the third post in a series of ‘reimagining governance - some brief thoughts and observations’.
A wildfire breaks out.
Emergency services respond, but they don’t act fast enough. Multiple agencies have conflicting protocols. Local communities organise mutual aid. Social media spreads misinformation. A group of Indigenous fire practitioners, who had warned about this exact risk for years are ignored.
By the time the fire is contained, it’s clear the real failure wasn’t response time; it was governance.
Governance assumed the crisis could be managed through structure and hierarchy. But the world didn’t work that way. It moved in networks, unpredictably, through relationships and knowledge that sat outside formal institutions.
Governance is failing because it assumes control is possible.
The world is complex, nonlinear, constantly shifting. Governance is still rigid, top-down and obsessed with predictability. The result? A growing gap between how power is structured and how the world actually works.
If governance keeps failing in complexity, maybe complexity isn’t the problem - governance is.
Governance always makes a choice:
• Hierarchy over networks.
• Stability over adaptability.
• Risk avoidance over resilience.
Governance assumes that top-down decision-making is more effective than decentralised coordination. But in reality, centralisation often slows down response times, disconnects decisions from lived reality and creates bottlenecks.
The trade-off?
• Governments retain control, but lose the ability to respond quickly.
• Institutions maintain authority, but ignore local intelligence.
• The system protects itself, but fails the people moving through it.
When governance assumes control we see:
• Disaster responses that reinforce bureaucracy instead of helping people.
• Governance paralysis when problems don’t fit existing structures.
• Decision-making removed from the people who actually experience the impact.
But governance could be designed differently:
• From rigid control to adaptive systems → Governance as a learning system that evolves over time.
• From top-down to polycentric → Multiple, overlapping centres of decision-making, where power is distributed.
• From certainty to sensing → Governance that listens and responds to reality rather than forcing reality into pre-existing models.
What This Might Look Like in Your Context
• In local government: decentralising small budget decisions to communities
• In a nonprofit: treating service delivery as co-designed, not top-down
• In a global organisation: designing learning loops instead of annual reviews
These are not radical acts.
They’re simple shifts; away from control, toward relationship.
• Where is your governance system pretending the world is more predictable than it is?
• How does control slow down or even block solutions in your field?
• What governance models already exist that thrive in uncertainty—and what can we learn from them?
Take five minutes today. Map a moment where your governance structure blocked flow. Then ask: what would trust have done differently?
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