Have you ever watched a situation spiral completely out of control and thought to yourself: this can’t possibly be happening by accident? I mean, really—when incompetence reaches such spectacular heights that it starts looking almost deliberate, maybe it actually is. Lately I’ve been noticing a pattern that makes my stomach turn. There seems to be a special class of people who don’t just fail upward; they fail everything upward, and somehow end up coordinating even bigger disasters.
Call them what you will—disaster architects, chaos consultants, or simply clusterfuck coordinators. These aren’t the bumbling bureaucrats we love to mock on social media. No. These are the polished professionals who stand calmly in the eye of the storm they helped create, directing traffic while the rest of us choke on the smoke.
The Anatomy of a Modern Clusterfuck
Let’s be honest: we’ve all lived through enough rolling catastrophes by now to recognize the smell. First comes the reassuring press conference. Then the confident guarantees. Followed shortly by the “nobody could have predicted” line. And finally, the quiet reassignment of the key players to even more powerful positions. Sound familiar?
That’s not random incompetence. That’s a system. And at the heart of that system sit the coordinators—people who understand that controlled demolition pays better than construction.
How They Select the Right People for Maximum Dysfunction
The first trick is recruitment. You don’t want genuine competence—that’s dangerous. Competent people solve problems and reduce chaos. Instead, you need a very specific psychological profile:
- Narcissistic enough to believe their own spin
- Insecure enough to follow orders without question
- Ambitious enough to ignore obvious red flags
- Disconnected enough from ordinary people to remain unaffected by the fallout
Put enough of these personalities in key positions, give them conflicting objectives, and watch the magic happen. The coordinator’s real job isn’t to manage the organization—it’s to manage the perception of management while everything burns.
The greatest trick the coordinator ever pulled was convincing the world he was trying to fix the problem.
— Observation from someone who’s seen too many boardrooms
I’ve sat in meetings where the person running the show literally had no idea what the numbers on the slide meant. And yet they spoke with total confidence. That isn’t accidental. That is trained behavior.
The Playbook: Five Moves Every Clusterfuck Coordinator Masters
After watching this pattern repeat across different industries and countries, certain tactics stand out. These aren’t mistakes. They’re moves.
- Compartmentalize knowledge — Make sure no single person understands the full picture. This prevents whistleblowers and maintains plausible deniability.
- Create competing fiefdoms — Pit departments against each other. Nothing generates more chaos (and billable hours) than internal warfare.
- Weaponize metrics — Demand impossible KPIs, then punish failure while rewarding the appearance of progress. Reality becomes optional.
- Rotate responsibility — Never let anyone stay in a position long enough to be held truly accountable. The buck never stops; it just keeps moving.
- Control the narrative — When the inevitable explosion occurs, be ready with the script: “isolated incident,” “perfect storm,” “lessons will be learned.”
Master these five moves and you can turn almost any functioning system into a smoking crater—while looking like the only adult in the room.
Why Chaos Pays Better Than Order
Here’s the part most people miss: disorder is incredibly profitable.
When everything works smoothly, margins are thin, competition is brutal, and innovation actually matters. But when systems break down spectacularly, entire industries spring up overnight to “fix” the problem. Consultants, crisis managers, compliance officers, turnaround specialists, PR firms, lobbyists—the list is endless.
Each layer of dysfunction creates another layer of rent-seeking. The coordinator doesn’t need to solve anything. They just need to keep the carousel spinning long enough for everyone to get their cut.
In my experience, the people who complain loudest about “bureaucracy” are often the ones quietly profiting from it the most. Funny how that works.
Real-World Fingerprints: Patterns You Can Spot
Once you start looking, the signs become almost comical. Here are a few classics:
- Multiple overlapping investigations that never reach conclusions
- Endless “working groups” and “task forces” that produce nothing but PowerPoint decks
- Senior executives who only appear during good news photo-ops
- Blame shifted downward while promotions flow upward
- Sudden resignations followed by quiet rehiring in adjacent roles
- Language that becomes increasingly abstract and meaningless (“stakeholder alignment,” “synergy capture,” “operationalizing resilience”)
When you see three or more of these happening simultaneously, congratulations—you’re watching professionals at work.
The Psychological Toll on Everyone Else
While the coordinators collect their bonuses, the rest of us pay a very different price. Constant gaslighting erodes trust. Impossible demands create burnout. Moving goalposts destroy motivation. And the knowledge that none of it matters anyway—that the game is rigged—kills hope.
I’ve talked to people who literally cried in their cars after meetings because they knew exactly what was coming and could do nothing to stop it. That isn’t management failure. That’s deliberate psychological warfare against your own team.
The opposite of love isn’t hate—it’s indifference. And nothing breeds indifference faster than working under a coordinator who treats human beings like chess pieces.
Yet somehow these same people are perpetually “shocked” when morale collapses and turnover skyrockets. Shocked, I tell you.
Can the Cycle Be Broken?
Here’s where things get tricky. Most reform efforts fail because they target symptoms instead of the underlying incentive structure. You can fire a few visible scapegoats, issue new guidelines, maybe even bring in an expensive consulting firm to tell you what you already know. None of it touches the root.
The real question is simpler and more brutal: who benefits from the chaos? Until you answer that question honestly—and until those beneficiaries lose more than they gain—the coordinators will keep coordinating.
Some organizations have managed to escape the trap, usually through one of three paths:
- Radical transparency — Make it impossible to hide failure through public dashboards and open metrics.
- Aligned incentives — Tie compensation to long-term outcomes, not quarterly appearances.
- Actual accountability — When someone orchestrates a disaster, they must face real personal consequences, not just a golden parachute.
These solutions sound obvious. That’s because they are. The reason they’re rare isn’t lack of knowledge—it’s lack of desire.
The Coordinator’s Endgame
At the highest levels, the goal isn’t even profit anymore. It’s control. A broken system is far easier to steer than a healthy one. When everyone is desperate, dependent, and distracted, power becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
That’s the quiet truth behind every rolling catastrophe we witness. The disorder isn’t a bug. It’s the feature.
So next time you see another “unprecedented” failure followed by the same familiar faces popping up in new positions of even greater authority, don’t just shrug. Ask yourself the uncomfortable question:
Who’s coordinating this clusterfuck… and what do they really want?
Because I promise you—they’re not as confused as they’re pretending to be.
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