Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours.
Though a couple of announcements are in the pipeline, there are no updates truly worth sharing this week. So, let us instead jump straight into today’s short and sweet topic: liminality.
I am fully aware, of course, that the mere word itself may cause some of you to move onto your daily Barron’s update, thinking “there goes JP again, off on one of his tangents into the obscure and overly technical”. But before you do, you might want to know that liminality is a key concept for strategic resilience, new product development and innovation. Understanding it may both make and save you, or your client, plenty of money.
What Liminality Means
The word originally comes from the Latin limitem, meaning a border or embankment between fields (in turn likely related to limen, i.e., threshold). In the Cynefin framework, it marks the shaded areas between the Complex and the Complicated, and the Chaotic and the Complex. Liminality can also be found in-between Aporia and Confusion, and within the Complicated domain, though we will not be discussing those today.
The easiest way to think about liminality, I have found, is as a controlled state of transition.
To illustrate, let us look at the liminal space between Complex and Complicated. As we know from the framework and previous discussions thereof, Complex is the domain in which there are a lot of competing hypotheses about what to do – but none that can be identified as the “correct” answer. In order to deal with this uncertainty, we are told to run parallel safe-to-fail experiments and probes, that is to say, they should (beyond being financially acceptable to fail) have five traits:
an indicator for success,
an indicator for failure,
a means with which to amplify in case of success,
a means with which to dampen in case of failure, and
But we also want to make sure that we do not scale too quickly (premature convergence), nor for that matter too slowly (eternal boiling), given that such errors may end up causing strategic setbacks and negative compounding of losses taken as a result. The liminal space allows you to manage this problem by, as Steve likes to phrase it, deliberatetly holding yourself in a low state of confidence.
Put differently, while the Complex domain is where one might run exploratory experiments, the liminal space is where one might move to pilot projects and iterations; there is evidence to support that something might actually be working. For the project managers among you, this is where you might employ Scrum or Lean. The goal is to move valuable ideas into the ordered Complicated domain where we can utilize our expertise and exploit what we have created.
Liminality between Complex and Chaotic, on the other hand, is about exploration without boundaries. As Chris Corrigan writes, it is particularly useful when an organization is starting to get set in its ways and one needs to, for whatever strategic purpose, break pattern entrainment. Bear in mind, however, that Chaos is where crises happen; any dive into it must be shallow, contained and limited in time.
Sometimes, this is exemplified by creating diversity of thought through multiple homogenous teams (as opposed to, for example, Scrum’s cross-functional teams) and temporarily removing constraints; one encourages participants to think in creative concepts, challenge norms, explore unreasonable ideas and ignore current methods. The generated ideas are then collected and, ideally, examined and critiqued by another team with their back turned to everyone else (as odd as this may seem, it is an established technique with which to avoid consensus building and biasing the group). However, while it is one way in which to create ideas that, if they meet the five point criterium above, can be explored properly, this approach can easily lead to ingroup bickering and unwarranted negativity (e.g., participants try to shoot down the opposition to their own suggestions regardless of whether the suggestions have merit or not).
A different approach to shallow dives is to instead intentionally put something at risk and try out an idea that in almost any other context would be the wrong thing to do. For example, one might radically change a product or service, knowing it would likely anger a client. But if one limits the trial to that one client that one would not mind losing anyway – remember, shallow dives must be contained – there could be a lot to learn.
Risk Managed
Understanding liminality can thus both generate novel concepts and turn promising innovations into sustainable revenue streams, create ideas worth exploring and identify those worth exploiting. Whether one is dealing with strategic challenges or operational execution, the payoff can be huge.
But working in liminal spaces can also help firms manage risk. Between Complex and Complicated, they might limit their financial exposure until there is a solid case for commitment (one might see it as a real options approach, standing in contrast to the too often argued for big bet). Between Complex and Chaotic, on the other hand, it can enable firms to take better care of the creativity and innovative capabilities already at their disposal, while trying out things that they would otherwise never be able to.
Next week, we are going to be looking further into this while rounding Cynefin off with a special interview. Until then, have the loveliest of weekends.
Onwards and upwards,
JP
This newsletter continues below with a market analysis exclusive to premium subscribers. To unlock it, merely click the button below.