When a CEO tells me they wish their employees were more capable of “self-organizing,” I usually ask what exactly that means. The answer matters for more than academic precision; leaders drawn to the notion of decentralization routinely turn to self-organization as the mechanism that will deliver it. The appeal is clear: Give people more autonomy, reduce bureaucracy, and allow coordination to emerge naturally rather than through layers of management. In other words, let them “organize themselves.”

But this appeal rests on a confusion. As I wrote in a recent paper, decentralization and self-organization aren’t the same thing. The difference comes down to a simple question: What does the structure of influence look like?

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