Agreeing on a Currency that Works

Do you have a handful of foreign coins in your home – sometimes from countries you’ve never even been to? Somehow we always have in our house, despite moves and several “why do we have these?” conversations. I’m pretty sure ours even includes a car wash token for a place that no longer exists, and maybe even an arcade token, both of which pass for coins at first glance. Of course, the majority of these will never be usable unless we happen to be in the right location. In the meantime, they’re currency that just doesn’t work.

Each of us also has currency that we spend in our work, although it may not always occur to us that that’s what it is. Tristan Harris is an American technology ethicist, and the executive director and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, and in interviews he talks about the currency of social media. He describes the development of social media from MySpace to TikTok as an arms race; instead of a competition over who has the most nuclear weapons, though, it has become a competition for attention; whichever social media platform successfully keeps a user’s attention the longest wins.

TikTok is specifically designed in short snippets that start one after the other to keep its user on as long as possible, and the algorithm picks videos to watch based on what you’ve already watched. Not only that, but our brains like completion, so when we see that we’re 80% down the screen on our chosen social media channel, we’re programmed to want to finish the remaining 20%. Of course, this is a false promise, because as we scroll down further, the algorithm brings up an additional level of content, and once again, we’re around the 80% mark.

Social media has become a race to the bottom for attention, regardless of the social impact. But it didn’t start that way. Of course each social media platform needs to make money to be a viable business – either through subscriptions or advertising – but there was at one point, for each platform, a guiding principle or intention about connecting people to each other in ways that added to their life, rather than took them away from their life. That currency was later traded in for the currency of attention.

I wonder what currencies you’re working in? Attention? Bottom line profit? Employee growth? Financial growth? Employee satisfaction? Speed? Needless to say, our work reality encompasses more than one currency, but if you boil it down, there’s usually one that stands out on top. Perhaps it’s obvious to you, or perhaps not. And maybe the currency you’re actually working in is not quite what you think it is.

This Week’s Tip:

• Make a list of the current projects you’re working on. In a second column, write down which currency is the primary motivator for each project. Then, in a third column, write down which currency is your primary motivator for each project. This may or may not match the one you listed before. In each column, there are no wrong answers, and your answer may be different than other people who are involved. (You may also want to write a separate list of other current projects in your organization that you’re not involved with, and which currency is the primary motivator for each project, even if you don’t have your own motivator.)
• Share your list of projects with others on your team, without sharing your currency answers in either column, and ask them what they would answer. This could be a brief exercise during a meeting; if so, have people share their answers, and see if there is consensus on the currencies for each project. If not (or even if so), talk about people’s answers, and ask for different perspectives; otherwise, these currencies will be assumed under the surface, and if people are working with different currencies from each other, some will simply be a currency that isn’t usable, like an old car wash token for a place that no longer exists.

Try these tips this week, and let us know how it goes – we’d love to hear from you. As always, you can subscribe to our feed here, or sign up for our weekly newsletter to get these articles directly in your inbox.