Cliques are beautiful

The most natural fit for a liquid world seem to be liquid teams. Who’s in a team? And who’s out? Most solid organizations have some senior role who is entitled to decide for others where they should belong. X decides if Y is going to work with Z in project W. A more autonomous approach is also possible. People self-organize to choose their team. But freedom needs boundaries in order not to fall into chaos. Just how many is the eternal and contextual question. I have thought an experiment we want to attempt at liqueed. It’s called “cliques are beautiful.”

Suppose you asked yourself a very basic question. “Who would I like to work with in a team next Monday?” Now suppose everyone (in the organization, hopefully in the world) asked themselves the same question. Now mentally plot every person as a point on a blank canvas. Draw an arrow between point A and B if A wants to work with B. We have sketched a graph depicting eagerness to share a working group. Let’s use that graph.

Imagine that A, B, C and D have all chosen each other (perhaps along other people). The four of them form a clique of the greater graph. I say cliques can be beautiful. A, B, C and D seem destined to work with each other. Think of it as the Tinder of teams. It’s terrifyingly simple. And most important of all, it creates so many questions.

• What if next week A doesn’t want to work with B any longer? Would this system prevent long term relationships? Is marriage dead?
• What if nobody wants to work with B? Should she leave the organization? Or is this just extremely valuable information to have deeper conversations?
• How would this work if we include everyone outside the organization in the graph? Would organizations as such keep making any sense?
• What if C is new (to the organization, the world of work, the industry) and nobody even know she exists?
• What if we have to take on a given project and a clique is not formed? Would we be better off as an organization if we rejected the project altogether?
• Would transitivity make sense (i.e. does the friend of my friend become my friend)? Would it be better to depend on the kind of project?

Liqueed has actually began like a clique. We explicitly asked ourselves this very same question before starting. Indeed, we all want to work with the others next Monday. It’s not clear when we’ll start opening up the graph to the rest of the world. The spirit of liqueed is universal, but we want to start slow. In the end the pace of change will emerge. As it should.