The Liminal Pivot

In 2020, Jeff Orlowski's The Social Dilema hit the Sundance Film Festival, and later that year, Netflix. It caused a stir. Like others in the docudrama genre it wanted to re-frame how we look at an issue. In this case the impact on society of the design decisions made by Social Media companies.

It put forwards the case that human attention was the primary currency of Social Media. It connected this abstraction of value with harms that many of us can relate to. That many of us feel to some degree.

Heat from coal or nuclear is converted into electricity (the lingua-franca of energy. In the same way human attention is being converted into advertising revenue.

In the shareholder-based economic model the primary focus is financial return. From here it's only a short, logical jump to see the incentive Social Media platforms have to compete for our attention.

This is how they increase ad spend, and their profits. That's one outcome. But it also biases towards extreme content to successfully compete for our attention. As the targets for company revenue increase so the content increases in extremity.

Mis-information and outrage tap deep into our psychology. A river finds the easiest way to the sea, and the ever-flowing logic of the Social Media platforms finds the easiest way to its destination. The algorithms are optimised for advertising revenue and so controversial content-types surface increasingly.

This simple equation then tracks into some of the big topics of the early 21st century. Topics for which we are not yet ready: mis-information, polarisation and mental health - to name a few.

Two interviewees featured heavily in the film, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin. Both co-founders of the Centre for Humane Technology. Their podcast, Your Undivided Attention has been on my listening list for a while now and I dip in on a semi-regular basis.

This is a slight aside but for me Your Undivided Attention hasn't quite found its groove yet. Which is fine, it can be important to see what gets traction before committing to a direction.

But as a listener the current flow can be disorientating. It moves from standout conversations such as the two-parter with Renée DiResta (episode 5 & episode 6) or with Audrey Tang (episode 22) to short-form 'bonus' episodes that round up recent news.

Still, when I saw that Harris and Raskin were themselves the interviewees for the 25 minute Episode 46, Here's Our Plan And We Don't Know, I stuck it on for my morning run.

It was a thought-provoking episode. I have re-named it "The Liminal Pivot Episode". Here are some thoughts.

The Liminal Pivot Episode

The word liminal here refers to threshold-spaces, doorways. You are entering a liminal space if you know that you have to move out of where you are, but that the future - the space into which you're walking - is unclear. In this sense it is the act of acting, trusting that the action will lead to insight or revelation about what the future will become.

Liminality is a moment of huge future opportunity, in a direction. It marries well to the word pivot. In the startup world pivoting can be described as a change of direction, based on the momentum of what has happened before.

Pivoting also requires an axis, something around which everything else turns. I will hold back on my interest in axiology here, but; meaningful change cannot happen without a strong bond to our underlying, driving values. In most companies this axis is profit and customer engagement - both of which are relatively, morally neutral. They do have but have unintended consequences though - as seen in the Social Dilema.

So what happens if the axis is not primarily financial? Financial return should be a secondary consequence of creating value. What if we choose a deeper value around which to pivot?

That is what is happening for me in this episode. Harris and Raskin are holding their hands up and saying "we don't know", "the value-return we are looking to create is uncharted". They are pioneering their own value-return system.

As a note, I am imperfectly summarising a definition of the word liminal, based on the work of the Cynefin team. Connected also with some of my personal experience as a coach. Cynefin give a great deal more colour and texture to it in their writings and their book has a much richer understanding of liminality, and sense-making in complexity.

Two Sins

I find it moving to hear leaders willing to hold their hands up and say, "I don't know". To hear them stand in front of the lie of the 5 year forecast and "certain returns" that have pervaded our collective memories. Leaders who walk forwards while acknowledging uncertainty around them are a rare breed apparently. Leaders unwilling to be this brave fall into the sin of certainty.

What then for the leaders willing to hold their hands up, saying "I don't know", "I don't have a crystal ball", and "the present is messy, how might we collectively walk into the future?".

These leaders then fall into a different sin than that of certainty. Theirs is the sin of uncertainty.

For those publicly committing the sin of uncertainty there is a pantheon of public opinion to contend with. It is seldom actually public opinion, but it will find them extremely guilty.

The Landscape

Let's give this a bit of context. We have, at least in the west, enjoyed possibly the most stable times in human history. Since the 1950's the west has worked to build and maintain financial systems that gave us priviledged access to global resources. But it wasn't sustainable, the cracks are showing.

We have also developed and learned through that time. We humans, and the human race, are never static for long. Our understanding of the impact of our actions is changing - for those willing to listen.

Maybe it is more accurate that we have much better access to the vital information needed to understand our impact. The writing on the wall is asking to make significant changes but we are struggling to listen.

This context leads to two key outcomes, both in a causal chain. Firstly we have those deeply invested in the status quo who have resources to fight the change. Secondly, we have their investment in a growing information war. The status quo is no longer useful for the majority (in what ways was it ever?).

Bewildered by the information-whirlwind around us we are primed to fold into the ranks of whoever sounds most certain. Often, even, if their plans are actually and demonstrably lies.

This transaction robs us of our agency as we transfer onto the "certain" leader and expect them to be instrumental on our behalf. I experience the slight irony in modern politics: there is a lot of talk of personal sovereignty, by a structure that is actually undermining it.

Leaders willing to say "I don't know" are flipping this unhealthy co-dependence on its head. There is no transference here. They are creating a healthy, but scarier reality in which we might each have to develop our own agency. Our own sovereignty.

Social Leadership

I'm wrestling with what this means for Social Leadership. Social Leaders learn to see the terrain, they practice their agency, and equip others to do the same.

But ultimately they are holding this in tension with the truth; "I don't know".