Conway’s Law and the Ghost in the Machine

How the Westminster state still runs on the wiring of its founders—and why true reform means starting over.

Melvin Conway famously observed that “organisations design systems mirroring their own communication structure.” Known as Conway's Law, this suggests a profound truth: the architecture of any system—whether technological, administrative, or social—is inevitably shaped by the patterns of human interaction within the organisation creating it.

When we apply Conway's Law to the Westminster state, it raises some intriguing questions. The state as it stands—centralised, hierarchical, departmental silos—reflects precisely the patterns of communication and authority embedded within. Could it be that the rigidity and inefficiency often observed in public services mirror equally rigid and siloed communication within the state itself?

But there's a deeper layer to this. Just as software systems reflect the organisational chart of the teams that build them, institutions reflect the imprint of their founder. The values, mental models, and interpersonal habits of a state's originators become baked into its structure and culture. When we encounter dysfunction in British public life, we are often encountering not accidental drift but the long shadow of choices made at inception. In this light, reform is not merely a managerial challenge—it is an act of creative re-founding.

If we take Conway's insight seriously, reforming the Westminster state requires more than administrative tweaks. Genuine reform would mean reimagining how power, ideas, and responsibilities flow through government. It requires decisive, visionary leadership—the entrepreneurial reshaping of institutions by capable founders or small teams who disrupt established patterns and impose new, more effective structures. Or as Joe Hill put it in Venture Statecraft, leadership which spends “less time trying to reform our public institutions, and more time replacing them.”

Perhaps Anglofuturism offers a lens through which to imagine such reform: envisioning a state reshaped by entrepreneurial statecraft, driven by clear strategic leadership rather than incremental adjustments. By doing so, we don't merely reshape government; we enable a government capable of reshaping the nation itself.

Ultimately, Conway's Law reminds us that systemic change is inseparable from organisational innovation. Reforming the Westminster state, therefore, must start with leaders who possess the clarity, capability, and ambition to imprint new patterns of interaction, governance, and ultimately, national direction.