Another key reason why clusterfucks appear is because somebody with the authority wants them to appear.

Stalin is said to have purposely given his cabinet conflicting portfolios to paralyze them: essentially giving him a free hand to denounce them and go about doing what we wanted to anyway. We have all observed similar situations where very brilliant people will purposely ask a team of people, none of whom have the authority to make any lasting decisions, to execute some task. Even if communication is good and trust exists among the participants, the very nature of the power vacuum is bound to cause a clusterfuck unless the team anoints an interim leviathan. It’s exceedingly rare.

It is entirely possible that some people don’t know that they go about creating such power vaccuums, but it’s hard to believe that they continue going through life without picking up on why they can’t get anything done.