Leader, Platform, Protocol

Comparing the three modes of coordination

You have to choose between speed and safety. You can't get both. That's what common sense tells us, and common practice confirms.

And then, there are the roundabouts. So simple and yet they miraculously increase both throughput and safety. Roundabouts reduce delays by 89%.¹ At the same time, they cut fatal crashes by 65%.²

To see why this is the case, let's compare it with the other two ways to regulate intersections: manual traffic control and traffic light control.

Manual, Lights, Roundabout

Manual traffic control is a centralized form of coordination, where the behavior of the affected agents is directed by a single person. It relies on officers’ senses (extended with radio reports) and judgment.

Traffic lights are an automated mode of control, with varying levels of adaptability to traffic conditions, ranging from none (when using only timers) to the use of simple sensors, and ultimately to smart lights utilizing IoT and AI. They have better throughput than manual traffic control, but would not make a specific decision based on direct perception and judgment of the situation.

In roundabouts, there is neither a person nor an algorithm. The physical properties and the rules are the constraints that produce a self-organized coordination behavior. The emerging order arises from each driver following basic rules (yielding to circulating traffic) and relying on personal judgment within the space between the rules. It's a matter of distributed cognition enabled by a protocol.

A prominent difference between manual and traffic light controls on one side, and roundabouts on the other, is the mediation of the coordination. In order for a driver, Alice, to coordinate with a driver, Bob, there is an intermediary, a human (a police officer) or a machine (a traffic light system). With a roundabout, coordination is achieved without an intermediary.

In all three situations, a protocol layer is present: thin in manual control, thicker with traffic lights, and fully dominant with roundabouts. In manual traffic, the embedded protocol consists of traffic laws, road markings, and standardized hand signal conventions that drivers must understand. Because a police officer can override or bend any of these cues on the spot, this protocol is very thin. Traffic lights codify rules such as "if red, stop" and "if green, go." There are also internal, hidden rules that can be inferred from the simple case of using only timers. In the technology-heavy case of smart lights, these rules remain opaque. The roundabout directs through physical affordances, rules communicated by specific signs, and the general roundabout rule "yield to circulating traffic."

Manual control is more adaptable to changing traffic conditions than even the smart lights. But this adaptation is a matter of reacting to congestions and emergencies. Roundabouts, in contrast, self-adapt continuously: drivers naturally adjust speeds and gaps, which smooths the flow.

Manual control is fragile: if the officer is distracted or absent, control collapses. Traffic lights are reliable, but a power outage or malfunction can halt the system. Roundabouts are extremely robust: drivers will instinctively slow and negotiate gaps even without signage.

Manual control scales poorly: one officer can effectively manage only one intersection or one direction. Traffic lights scale better – one city can network many signalized intersections, though each requires its equipment. Roundabouts have high scalability: no extra technology is needed to add traffic (beyond roadway design), and even busy multi-lane roundabouts operate without controllers.

Manual control incurs ongoing labor costs and is expensive over time. Traffic lights require capital for installation (including poles, wiring, and sensors) and periodic maintenance. Roundabouts have high up-front construction costs (landscaping, redesign) but minimal operating costs thereafter.

These three ways of coordinating can be seen as exemplars of the three main coordination modes: leader, platform, and protocol. But, unlike traffic regulation, where there is a data-supported general agreement that the roundabouts are the most efficient and effective way, that is far from being the case in other situations of coordination and governance.

Leader, Platform, Protocol

We need ways to deal with each other, because we share commons, and because the social structures we build tend to create even more coordination problems.

Initially, coordination was a matter of ritual and hierarchy. The invention of writing enabled record-keeping, planning, taxation, and administrative protocols. Armies were coordinated through clear chains of command. Later, guilds and trade leagues developed systems of rules and standards to regulate trade. The industrial era brought standardized workflows, followed by cybernetics and operations research, which introduced feedback control and mathematical optimization. Today, we have internet protocols and platform algorithms.

In all cases, the coordination is achieved via some combination of leader, platform and protocol, with one of these modes dominating.

Leaders

Leaders are highly valued in business. The top 10 CEOs’ salaries are in the range between 80 and 200 million dollars. Leaders are valued even higher in politics. The US election campaign consumes billions of dollars.

We want to be saved by special people. Some want to be saved by a special person holding a sword; others want to be saved by a special person holding a pen.

Our narratives tend to focus exclusively on the superficial deportments of Special People — the retreating self-effacement of the sophisticated Great Bureaucrat vs. the charismatic theatrics of the populist Great Man. But the shared epistemic commitment to Greatness as an explanatory model goes largely unchallenged. We are so busy fighting over the relative merits of Pareto Lions and Pareto Foxes, and accusing each other of elitism, we forget to question the shared premises of all elitism.³

The common desire to be saved by special people is inspired by fairy tales, fantasy stories and action movies.

We see leaders as desirable or inevitable in every situation involving coordination and governance. If we reuse the source of inspiration — fairy tales, fantasy stories and action movies — also as a source for classification, we can plot leaders in dimensions from evil to good, and from stupid to smart:

          | Evil       | Good
----------|------------|--------
Stupid    | Harmful    | Useless
Smart     | Calamitous | Precarious

The outcome is either bad or unreliable.

A historical example of stupid and evil is Idi Amin; for a contemporary, a random pick from the MAGA elites has a high probability of being spot-on.⁴ Moving to the right, Neville Chamberlain seems an excellent fit. He had good will, but — putting it mildly — lacked strategic foresight. Down-left, that would easily be Stalin. Moving to the right again, a good pick from the same lands would be Mikhail Gorbachev. A more contemporary example is Jacinda Ardern. And since that's the only hopeful quadrant, a third example, this time not for a country leader but a company (and platform) leader, would be Jack Dorsey.

Leaders in the lower right quadrant don't last long. They face personal, political or structural pressures. Gorbachev's reforms unleashed forces that he couldn't control. After an impressive crisis leadership, Jacinda Ardern abruptly vacated office mid-term. Jack Dorsey made hundreds of millions believe that social media platforms can be a good thing, then the board replaced him with Parag Agrawal, and finally Musk’s takeover in October 2022 ousted Agrawal and, by extension, any remnant of Dorsey’s approach.⁵

Leaders in the first column of the table stay in power by relying on a small group of essential supporters whom they reward to maintain loyalty. Leaders in the lower right quadrant depend on the support of a larger group of people, making it harder to satisfy everyone, which leads to shorter tenures.⁶

Leaders in the lower-right are not precarious only for being replaced by leaders from the other quadrants. They may not be replaced at all but simply drift to another quadrant.

Most leaders use their power to stay in power and need platforms to amplify that power.

Platforms

Platforms are commonly used as a shortcut for digital platforms. And that means a client-server architecture and business model, providing centralized services. If we look at platforms as a more general coordination paradigm, then we need a more inclusive definition, like this one:

A (socio)technical intermediary that coordinates and governs interactions among participants.

Classes of platforms are: banks, representative democracies, nation-states, churches, and, of course, the digital platforms.

Examples of digital platforms are Facebook, X-twitter and LinkedIn in social media, Uber, Bolt and Lyft in transport, Airbnb and Booking.com in accommodation, Amazon and e-Bay in e-commerce, Stripe, PayPal, Revolut, and Wise for payments. Many digital platforms disrupted traditional businesses in a software-eating-the-world fashion, demonstrating how a transport company can be profitable without owning a single vehicle and how an accommodation company can be profitable without owning a single hotel.

One distinction between digital and other platforms is that the former take advantage of network effects. Facebook attracted the same number of participants as the Catholic Church, only 200 times faster.

Digital platforms have a small power locus, either a single authority or a small group. That can be a sole owner like Musk of X-twitter, or a founder having control over the company through the majority of the voting rights, which is the case of Mark Zuckerberg for Meta (Facebook), and Zhang Yiming for ByteDance(TikTok). Similar is the case for Airbnb, Spotify and Stripe, with the difference that the majority of the voting rights are collectively owned by the co-founders.

Platforms provide intermediation, structure and control.

Platforms provide intermediation by connecting participants and enabling different kinds of collaboration. Commercial banks are intermediaries between borrowers and savers. Central banks are intermediaries between commercial banks, governments, and the broader economy. In representative democracies, elected representatives act as intermediaries for the distribution of the commons between citizens and for translating public needs into policies. A nation-state is a platform where the government acts as an intermediary between citizens and national affairs, enforcing laws, managing public services, and regulating interactions within its territory. Churches serve as intermediaries between believers and God, as well as between believers themselves. Digital platforms connect users for social interactions (Facebook, X-twitter) or service providers with consumers (Uber).

Platforms provide infrastructure and affordances. Commercial banks deploy branch networks, ATMs, and digital structures for online services to enable financial transactions across. Central banks operate payment and settlement systems infrastructures for interbank clearing and monetary control. Representative democracies maintain legislative frameworks, electoral systems, and bureaucratic processes that structure policy-making. Nation-states build public works to enable service delivery and civic participation. Churches build sacred spaces — cathedrals, chapels, and altars — designed to channel worship through architectural cues, liturgical furnishings, and ritual objects that constrain and enable congregational behaviors. Digital platforms offer computing infrastructure that shapes how users navigate, create, and consume content or services.

Platforms provide control and governance through a system of rules and enforcement mechanisms. Commercial banks apply governance, risk, and compliance frameworks. Central banks provide payment and settlement rules, collateral eligibility rules, and liquidity mechanisms that coordinate funds transfers among banks. Representative democracies provide the rules of electoral engagement and legislative procedures, defining who may stand for election, how votes are cast and counted, and the formal debate and amendment processes in parliaments and committees. Nation-states enforce specific legislation within their geographical boundaries. Churches govern through canon law and ecclesiastical courts. Besides that, there are specific sets of rules like those of Saint Benedict. It was the first systematic codification of monastic life. Digital platforms govern users via Terms of Service, enforced by automated algorithms and human moderators.

Protocols

Protocols are best understood through the famous quote of A. N. Whitehead:

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them

It also shows why protocols are rarely thought of as a solution to complex problems. They get visible only when they are dysfunctional.