A content management system (CMS) autonomically generates structure for a document when a synchronization rule references structure that does not exist in the document. A dynamic structure policy specifies at least one criterion that determines if and how the structure is autonomically generated. By autonomically generating structure in a document, a CMS administrator or CMS user (such as the author) is relieved of the manual task of generating the structure before the synchronization rule can be successfully processed. Once dynamically generated, the added structure may be auto-populated with dummy data or with default data specified in the autonomic structure policy.