Those with the needed skills or information lead regardless of rank, and all create utilizing available resources. People learn and adapt as they proceed. When the crisis or challenge passes, organizations often return to wasted time, little challenge, routine, disrespectful behavior, and excessive rules and supervision. Purpose is unclear. Boundaries become impermeable, and information is hoarded.
People slip back to mediocrity, and the aliveness they felt dissipates.
Leaders will deny, blame, seek scapegoats, and retreat to their offices. These efforts to control or prevent self-organization go against the natural behavior of living systems and suppress vast potential and possibility. All living systems, including organizations and people, self-organize continually. Hopefully, self-organization is around the shared identity created through the process of determining purpose, values, and vision. If the organization's purpose, values, and vision are not shared and internalized the organization will continue to self-organize but it will be at lower levels.