James C. Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed maps two thousand years of a strategic dance in the Southeast Asian highlands. Valley states expand, trying to capture populations for taxation and corvée labor. Hill peoples retreat upward, maintaining autonomy through geography, social organization, and deliberate "primitivism" that makes them ungovernable.
The book's insight: these peripheral peoples weren't primitive failures at civilization. They were sophisticated practitioners of strategic positioning—close enough to valley states to trade and benefit, far enough to avoid being absorbed. They chose autonomy over the supposed advantages of state organization.
Scott calls it "the art of not being governed." But the real art is more subtle: being governed just enough to function within larger systems without being crushed by them.
That pattern doesn't just apply to Zomia highlanders in the 18th century. It applies to organizational life right now.
The middle manager occupies organizational highlands—caught between valley state (executive mandates, strategic directives, "alignment") and the populations they're supposed to govern (their team, who need autonomy to do actual work).
The role as typically defined is impossible: execute perfectly upward while maintaining team loyalty downward. Translate strategy into action without losing people in the process. Be simultaneously the state's agent and the team's advocate.
So middle managers do what peripheral peoples have always done: they practice strategic positioning at the edges.
Not quite captured by executive demands (there's always creative interpretation, strategic delay, selective compliance). Not quite separate from them either (you still need executive resources, political capital, air cover). The craft is finding your equilibrium point in that tension.
The parallel is precise:
Valley states want legibility, standardisation, predictable extraction (executives want metrics, alignment, "visibility into" your team's work)
Hill peoples want autonomy, flexibility, room to adapt to local conditions (your team wants to actually solve problems without bureaucratic interference)
The middle manager navigates between these forces, practicing the art of being governed just enough from both directions
Watch a murmuration of starlings. Thousands of birds moving as one coherent flock, turning in perfect synchronization, expanding and contracting like a single organism breathing.
No leader. No central control. No org chart.
Each bird responds to the six or seven nearest neighbors. Local awareness creates emergent global coordination. The flock appears to have intention, but that intention emerges from simple field rules operating at individual scale.
What if organizations work the same way?
The org chart is theater—what executives draw to feel like they're in control. The real coordination happens through field dynamics nobody's officially mapping. Middle managers responding to local conditions, team members adjusting to immediate pressures, informal networks carrying information faster than formal channels.
Not chaos. Not randomness. Field-based coordination.
The middle manager's job isn't to impose top-down control (that's the org chart fantasy). It's to understand the field dynamics they're operating within and position themselves where they can influence the flow without trying to dictate it.
Key insight from murmuration research: Birds maintain individual flight while moving collectively because they're positioned on equipotential surfaces within the flock's field. They're not following orders—they're responding to gradients.
Organizations have gradients too. Political pressure, resource availability, information flow, attention economics. The skilled middle manager learns to read those gradients and position their team where the work can happen with minimum interference.
Scott describes how highland geography enabled peripheral autonomy—difficult terrain made state control expensive. Hills provided refuge. Distance provided buffer.
Organizations have geography too:
- Distance from executive attention: Some functions are visible, some peripheral. Peripheral teams have more autonomy because governance is expensive at distance.
- Terrain difficulty: Complex technical work creates "difficult terrain" executives can't easily map. The more specialized your domain, the more autonomy you can maintain.
- Escape routes: The option to leave (other jobs, other companies, retirement, entrepreneurship) creates leverage. Captive populations get governed more thoroughly.
- Strategic illegibility: Sometimes making your work less legible to executives gives you room to operate. Not deception—just maintaining appropriate opacity.
Middle managers who understand this geography can position their teams strategically. Not to evade all governance (you need some connection to organizational resources), but to maintain enough autonomy to do excellent work.
Governing upward (managing executive expectations):
- Translation, not transmission: Convert strategic abstraction into operational reality without pretending the translation is lossless
- Strategic visibility: Make some work visible (builds trust), keep some opaque (preserves autonomy)
- Managing demand: Not saying "no" to impossible requests, but negotiating what's actually achievable given constraints
- Building capital: Delivering visible wins to earn permission for invisible autonomy
Governing downward (creating space for your team):
- Air cover: Absorbing executive turbulence so your team can focus
- Resource acquisition: Fighting for budget, headcount, tools—the logistics of autonomy
- Maintaining illegibility: Protecting your team from metrics that would constrain their effectiveness
- Field sensing: Understanding team dynamics well enough to intervene minimally
Governing yourself (the internal equilibrium):
- Not getting captured by either side (becoming pure executive mouthpiece or pure team advocate)
- Maintaining enough detachment to see the field clearly
- Building resilience to chronic impossible demands
- Finding sustainable practice that doesn't require martyrdom
This isn't taught. There's no curriculum for "how to practice middle management as conscious craft." So people burn out, or check out, or blame themselves for failing at an impossible role.
But once you see it as peripheral practice—maintaining autonomy at organizational edges while staying connected enough to function—the role becomes legible. Not easy. But practicable.
Scott's peripheral peoples as organizational model: Detailed mapping of Zomia strategies (social organization, strategic "primitivism," geographic positioning) onto modern organizational dynamics. [Field Notes series →]
Murmuration field theory: Mathematical modeling of how local rules create emergent coordination, applied to organizational communication patterns and decision-making. [Field Notes series →]
Middle management as craft: Case studies, field observations, and systematic documentation of equilibrium-finding strategies that actually work. [Ongoing research →]
The φ-ovoid in organizational dynamics: Testing whether the same geometric equilibrium that governs atomic bonding appears in how teams find stable operating points. [Speculative research thread →]
Strategic illegibility: When and how opacity serves organizational effectiveness without becoming dysfunctional hiding. [Field Notes →]
New to Scott's work? Start with [this Field Notes summary] of The Art of Not Being Governed and why it matters for organizational life.
Middle manager feeling squeezed? Jump into [the craftsman's practice series]—practical observations on governing upward, downward, and self.
Interested in murmuration dynamics? The [field theory research] explores how starling coordination might model organizational flow.
Want the theoretical deep dive? [Peripheral peoples and organizational geography] maps Scott's concepts systematically onto modern structures.
Everything connects. The geometry of autonomy operates at every scale. Your challenge is finding your equilibrium point in whatever system you're navigating.
The maps are here. Your territory is your own.