The Myth of Managed Chaos

“You don’t manage chaos, you endure it,” I responded. Our conversation had wandered from business to family to the world and the many threads of doubt and uncertainty that entwine it. My comment was a reaction to the phrase “managed chaos,” a common trope that for numerous reasons really struck me in that moment. Saying that one is managing chaos is like claiming to be an effective multitasker…it’s a logical fallacy that simply is not true. If you were managing chaos, it would not be chaotic, and however well you think you are juggling those tasks, you are actually only able to focus your attention on one thing at a time.

What we’re really saying when we use the term “managed chaos” is that we are surviving – we’re getting by in the middle of a storm. A good analogy might be the actions of an individual soldier on the battlefield. He may a set of orders and a plan to take the hill, but once he meets the enemies plans and the bullets start flying, chaos ensues. Managing is reacting moment by moment to things you cannot control and hopefully surviving long enough to come out on top. If you survive, it’s not because you managed it but because you brought order to it in being a more effective killer in the melee.

Of course, there are moments when chaos explodes upon our life and we can only react. But make no mistake, you are not managing it, your are surviving, enduring, persisting, within it. Chaos is moving you along in its flow of uncertainty and your existence within the reactive precludes your ability to look beyond the maelstrom to any effective degree. You are caught within the grip of necessity and your decisions must be instinctive, built-upon incomplete information, and fueled by the emotive powers of feeling which exist within your fight or flight survival mechanism. Some may be better than others in this sort of hand-to-hand combat, but none of us are operating in our optimal state.

Hierarchy of Needs

Remember Abraham Maslow? In the 40’s and 50’s, Maslow developed his famous “Hierarchy of Needs” which concluded that human behavior is driven from an ascending hierarchy of needs moving from basic physiological needs like air, water, food, shelter, to safety needs like security, employment, health, to love and belonging, to esteem, and finally to self-actualization – the need to reach our full potential. The lower need must be satisfied before we can move to the higher need.

Chaos is the storm of uncertainty that throws doubt upon the status of our needs. The more we are drawn into our lower needs, the less we are able to flourish in our full potential. Merriam Webster tells us that chaos is a state of utter confusion or inherent unpredictability in a system. It is disorder and by definition, we cannot work optimally within it – we can “manage” only in the sense that we are surviving it.

To live in it persistently is to accept a habitual “survival mode” existence. To claim one is managing it is to rationalize the habit that has formed and become comfortable for any number of reasons. We become attached to our habits as they are familiar and even simply surviving can become comfortable as it is certainly better then the alternative. Claiming to manage chaos is something we tell ourselves to justify a lack of discipline, sloth, or focus. it suggests acceptable degrees of uncertainty and a tolerance for imperfection.

Imperfect World, Perfectly Prepared

Of course, the world is not perfect, controlled, or certain. But that is the point. Aiming for less than control, for managed chaos, leaves us even further from perfect and resting in justified disorder. The unexpected will come. The chaos will appear at the door…uninvited. It is the ordering of what we do control that best prepares us and those around us to respond rather than just react. Order allows us to meet chaos with our full faculties and intention. We are prepared.

Order is focus and control. Calm. Peace. Predictability. Good operations are about order. Process is about order. Systems are about order. Control. There are plenty of things that push upon our control but we don’t have to help them. Whether in our home, our office, our body – much sits within our control. Chaos puts us in survival mode. Managing it is merely surviving. We cannot flourish when we are just surviving. Accepting it becomes a habit – we learn to tolerate it and we adapt thereby perpetuating survival mode.

Chaos begets chaos. Order fosters order. Look at your home. Chaos is messiness, untidiness, things unkept, not in their right place. Children will adapt and reflect such disorder. Schedules, structure, predictable expectations, all enable children to move and behave with certainty within the system. Chaos is anything goes, defiance, disobedience, and following our passions. It is moment by moment, anything goes, living and it leaves all within its grip feeling uncertain and often unsafe.

Tolerance of Chaos

We’ve become too tolerant of chaos. We are too comfortable with disorder. We’ve become too accepting of living in survival mode, floating along and reacting to the chaos foisted upon us by our politicians, media, entertainment, social media, and the multitude of other distractions that fool us into believing we’re simply multitasking as we sit in the middle of messes in our lives, our homes, and our workplaces. The photo for this post was taken as I recently drove to my office. What kind of society needs a “hoarding cleanout” service?

I live within the world of health and healthcare, a place where our tolerance of disorder has reached epidemic proportions. As consumers, we endure confusion over our own health and causes of unhealthiness as swell as access to care and its associated costs. As employers funding health benefits, we endure the chaos of options and obfuscation foisted upon us by a system that is so busy feeding itself that it can no longer see beyond its own voracious appetite to the needs of those it is supposed to serve. We tolerate the disorder because we feel there are no good options and we no longer trust what the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, or health systems tell us. This is a lie but we’ve been trained to exist within it.

Made to Order

We are made to bring order to the world around us. We are made to live within the tension of chaos pressing upon the order we need to thrive. We intuitively know that we must create order or there can be no flourishing, yet we tolerate the disorder of imposed upon us by the powers and principalities. The answer is to start i our own domains. We must bring order to that which is placed within our dominion. Good stewardship is good order. Order in our homes fosters order in our places of work which fosters order in our communities. Order strengthens the individual which strengthens the organization which strengthens the community and then the society.

It is good and right to desire order in the world around us. It is fitting to defy the chaos we feel pressing-in upon us. It is necessary that we aim for order so that we are prepared when we are assaulted by disorder in a world prone to chaos. It is possible for us to elevate past the habits of chaos that so often grip us; there are options for us whether we’re drowning in the stuff that disorders our homes and our hearts or we faced with the chaos of a disordered health system. We must first decide to address the habits that hold us before we can begin to focus on how we and those within our dominion rise to true flourishing.

Bringing order begins with a decision. You must first decide it is possible, then you can decide to act upon it.