We are liminal
We are liminal
At my organisation we currently have many meetings where we talk about our strategy and how we want to better define what we stand for and how we work. In those meetings, I often get a sense of utter confusion. And it is not only me being confused, but confusion is what I am sensing in the room. I was thinking a lot about why I was experiencing such a sensation. When observing what is going on in the meetings, I see that people seem to argue about a specific issue but somehow the arguments do not seem compatible, seem to use very different languages (while we all communicate in English most of the time). I struggle even to put this feeling in words, but it seems to me that we never come to a point where I have a sensation that we found each other and have been able to get to a felt consensus. It never really clicks. While I cannot see into the others and feel what the others feel, I often sense that nobody is really happy with what the outcome of these meetings are but given that we have to move forward we accept what's there. So we muddle our way forward.
As things go, I had a little epiphany of what is happening while running one morning (in my earlier life as a consultant I was sometimes wondering if I could put my runs on some clients' timesheets ...). The reason, I believe, for why the above phenomena are showing up, the reason for the confusion, is that the organisation is experiencing liminality. More specifically, the liminality of the threshold between a world that is linear, predictable, controllable and a world that is complex, non-linear, relational and largely unpredictable. (Of course these are not different worlds in a strict sense but rather a shift in our perception of how the world works - our beliefs and worldview.)
In simple words, a liminal space is a space where something is ending but has not completely disappeared, while something new is already showing up and becomes graspable. It is that space in-between. In his brilliant little book Liminal Thinking, Dave Gray describes the concept of liminal as follows (Gray 2016, xx):
The word liminal comes from the Latin root limen, which means threshold.
A threshold is a border, a boundary, or an edge. It is a marginal, in-between space that defines two things, while at the same time being neither one nor the other.
Being in that space can naturally feel confusing, particularly if you are not aware that you are in such a liminal space. The way this shows up in my organisation is that we embrace many ways of working that are adapted to that complex and relational world. Also many of the projects we fund are innovative and embrace the unpredictability and the need to work together collaboratively. We are experimenting with ways of doing monitoring and reporting differently, and we are also establishing long-term relationships that allow for trust to emerge and guide joint action. At the same time, there are lots of elements of the 'old' world still around and kicking. There is a sense that we need to measure and prove our effectiveness and efficiency by measuring SMART indicators, aggregating them across the organisation, and comparing them over time. Our grant management system is geared towards annual reporting cycles using default templates and it will send automatic emails if a grant partner has not submitted a report on time. Contracts are lengthy and defying the trust-based relational way of working that happens between grant managers and grantees.
You are entering a liminal space when you move from one set of coherent believes or one belief system into a new belief system. Dave Gray quotes in his book Marshall McLuhan (Gray 2016, xviii):
Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment.
In both English and German (and possibly other languages), this moment is often described by using the metaphor of scales falling from your eyes. It's not that you see one new 'truth' but a whole network of things suddenly make sense that did not make sense before. Stepping over the threshold, or through the metaphorical door, does not just help you to understand new things, but it radically shifts the way you understand what is happening around you and what happened in the past. Such shifts are often very difficult to unsee. And they can have profound consequences. Gray anecdotally describes the moment he quit smoking at the age of 29, which he thought would be impossible:
[Quitting smoking] in itself was a huge change. But it was accompanied by a deeper change. I realized that if I could quit smoking something I had thought was impossible then I was capable of a lot more. The confidence and courage I gained by quitting smoking led me to change my life in far more profound ways. Within the next few months, I ended my relationship with my girlfriend, quit my job, changed industries, moved across the country, and started my own business.
My whole perspective had changed. And that shift in perspective changed my life.
Back to my organisation. Things are a bit more complicated than the case of Gray quitting smoking. The liminality we experience is not just stemming from shifts within the organisation. Some argue that large parts of human society is currently in a prolonged space of liminality, transitioning from the era of enlightenment, rationality, reductionist ways of knowing, capitalist market logic, etc. to a new era that is currently emerging and hard to describe, but some give it attributes like complexity, unpredictability, holisitic/systemic/ecological approaches to knowing, relationality, etc. Many of us sense this shift and sense the global confusion that goes with it. So it is no surprise that this shift and corresponding entering into the liminal space with all its inherent confusion is also happening inside many organisations - and, indeed, inside many individuals.
How do we deal with liminality? I don't have a recipe, but I think what is most important is to be aware of what is happening, be highly and continuously reflexive (individually, as an organisation and, indeed, as a society) of the way we show up in this situation and the way we act, and stay with it. We can identify ways of doing things that are informed by the 'old' believes while we can try to see what is emerging linked to the new believes. I am currently reading a lot about being aware of what wants to/needs to die and hospicing those aspects, while being aware of what wants to be born, and bring these aspects into being. This reminds me of Theory U of which I have been sceptical in the past. So while I don't agree with all details of Otto Scharmer's version, I can see the usefulness of the movement of letting go, sitting with what is, and letting come, leaning into the emergent future.
Btw, the title of the post is a hat tip to a community I was part of for a while that calls itself 'we are liminal.' Definitely worth checking out, as well as the book and podcast by the community's founder, Roland Harwood, both called On the Edge.
Reference: Gray, David. 2016. Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think. Two Waves Books. Brooklyn, NY, USA.
The Paper Museum
Nora Bateson's poem 'Liminal' (from Bateson 2016, 111)
Liminal
If you lie to me, my skin will know.
I won't notice,
But the undercurrents will rearrange.
Minds, mouths and limbs all clamor for ungiven providence.
But each domain is somehow an empty house.
We are not there.
We are in the scent of a gaseous brew.
Forested with silence that is curating our signals,
Our aggregate is music-ing.
If something is broken--the fixing is in the alchemy of our breath.
If you are half here,
I am half there, finding you.
If your glance goes blank, and your hands don't seek me in your sleep,
The breakfast we share might be photography.
We might be unfed.
Recultivating is a field of fingertips, returning curious a bodysuit of taste buds.
Tending to the touch of our drifting thoughts,
Listening to the flavor of our gestures.
Meet me in our particular eternity.
Why have I added this to my Paper Museum? Because I love Nora's poetry and also because it fits the topic of the email this week.
Reference: Bateson, Nora. 2016. Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing Through Other Patterns. Triarchy Press.
Image
Magnolia trees are flowering, I took the picture last weekend at the Neuer Garten in Potsdam, Germany.