A Dialogic Model of Time

including OBJECTIVE, SEASONAL, RECALLED and IMMEDIATE TIME
by Peter Garrett

AN INTRODUCTION TO TIME

There is a common misconception that time exists quite independently of people. Minutes, hours and days seem so real that they feel like they are actually there - but try showing someone a minute… We tend to overlook that as children we learned how to ‘tell’ the time, and in doing so we learned a humanly-devised way of co-ordinating a range of seemingly disparate events that happen all around us. Co-ordination is the great gift of chronological time, but it is not the only system of time. Once we understand this, we can free ourselves from being locked into one kind of time, and open the door to the choice of employing different time systems according to the circumstance and the need.

WHEN DOES UNDERSTANDING TIME MATTER?

A few examples in the workplace:

• When managers are promoted into leadership roles - and (as all too many do) they become subject to ‘time sickness’, overload and eventually burn-out because they are trapped in one kind of time.
• When organisations are subjected to major change initiatives - and the stress level rockets to disturbing levels because timing is forced.
• When an organisation’s future depends on visionary thinking - andthe answer proposed is a percentage increase in performance, proving that organisation is stuck in a time pocket.
• When coaching a serial ‘fire-fighter’ how to mature into a ‘wisdom’ leader - which proves impossible without unlocking time shackles.

At a personal level:

• When you want to relax and enjoy the first three days of your fortnight’s holiday - and you are in denial that you are still trying to ‘unwind’.
• When you find yourself in a three-legged race with your spouse or partner - because you are locked in yet another cross-time argument.
• If you want to flourish or at least survive the first few years of your retirement - and the obituaries reveal that a surprising number of people do not…

And at a global level:

• When you come to realise that short-term gain is destroying the ecology of the planet - and it is just a matter of time…

UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENT SYSTEMS OF TIME:

To help understand the structure and nature of time, we are proposing a framework that has two dominant external time systems named seasonal time and objective time. As we are defining them, timing within seasonal time involves reading a range of factors to tell when the time is right, whereas timing within objective time is simply checked against a clock or timetable. As well as the two external time systems, there are two dominant internal time systems - that we have named immediate time and recalled time. Immediate time is more presence-bound and in contrast recalled time is more memory-bound. At a practical level, these two internal time systems are each experienced differently according to the level of awareness and participation. Recalled time includes reactive time and reflective time, whilst immediate time includes consumed time and proprioceptive time. The relationship between these internal and external time systems can be depicted as follows:

External and internal systems of time

Each one of these time systems is a legitimate and good way to order events and make sense of a changing world. There is a range of activity where each is best suited to the occasion, and a range where each is less well suited. Put another way, each one of them comes with benefits and with handicaps (the light and shadow sides) which result from the different underlying assumptions and ontology of each system. Learning how in practice to find one’s way around this territory of time opens up the option of choosing which time system to engage more fully in a particular situation. The resulting sense of timing affects one’s thinking, decision-making and behaviour. Practice with timing develops the capacity of balance, poise and effectiveness that we are calling ‘fluency’ with time.

EXTERNAL TIME SYSTEMS:

OBJECTIVE TIME

The system of time which dominates the ‘civilised’ (or what could perhaps more accurately be called the over-developed) world is driven and measured by the clock. It is chronological time, or what we are choosing to call objective time. It is so pervasive that many people think it is time, rather than a humanly invented system of time. It is a system historically based on the earth’s rotation around the sun and it involves dividing the year (one rotation around the sun) into equal segments of months and days, and the day (one rotation on the earth’s axis) in turn into hours, minutes and seconds. The Greeks called this kind of time ‘chronos’, from which we derive the word ‘chronometer’. In 18^th century England the public clocks in the centre of different towns varied by as much as twenty minutes from one another. It was only with the advent of the public horse-drawn carriage service, apparently, that these clocks were synchronised. We have become more and more precise as we have organised our daily activities by chronological, measured or objective time. Now we are adept enough to see differences of as little as a few hundredths of a second when, for example, watching the televised finish of a 100m athletics race.

The strength of objective time is co-ordination. The externally measured co-ordination of human and other activity has enabled enormous technological advancement, which has accelerated in recent centuries to the benefit of the developed world. Because of chronological time we can predict the arrival time of a shipment of goods, or the completion of a project, and we can measure the progress - and accommodate delays or take advantage of being ahead of schedule. We can tell if we are on time by checking the timetable. Not only can you and I arrange to meet in a foreign city at a particular time on a given day, and succeed in doing so - but with sufficient resources we can, and apparently have, landed people on the moon.

There are huge and evident advantages to employing objective time - and there are costs. The shadow side of chronological time has two parts. The first is its impact on the way people think. It is a mechanistic system of time based on external measurement which encourages objective thinking. It encourages a detached kind of thinking where people, animals and other living things are conveniently considered as objects which can be organised. The question becomes: what is the most advantageous way to organise them? In this kind of thinking, trees become lumber, and people become human resources. It can become the science of management where ‘time is money’.

This in turn leads to the proliferation of repetitive processes that are fine-tuned and then replicated. It results in monocultures in agriculture, fast food chains, cheap ball point pens, supermarkets and so on. On a large scale, this is globalisation. In a single-minded way it can lead to an imperative to realise share-holder value (or limited stake-holder value), even where that is to the permanent detriment of the culture or physical environment upon which our collective future depends.

The second shadow of objective time is that it almost invariably has the impact of speeding things up. The implicit direction of objective time is ‘how can we do the same thing in a shorter time?’ This is not just in time and motion studies in manufacturing plants. Using objective time leads us to drive rather than walk, to email rather than write, to microwave frozen food rather than cooking fresh food and so on. In a pervasive way it affects every area of daily life and in a seemingly irreversible way. It is when you visit a third-world country where a different time system is dominant, that you become frustrated trying to get things done and realise you are moving at a much faster pace than you thought. One ‘time’ joke which brings this out is:  ‘This aircraft is due to land shortly in Namibia. Please set your watches to the local time by turning them back by twenty years’ And sure enough, when you turn on the radio to listen to the news you will find that it is read much slower than in North America or Europe where objective time is dominant.

SEASONAL TIME

Objective time is pervasive and is the governing time system for the lives of people who work in large organisations - which is now a significant percentage of people in the world. There are other time systems. One, with which we are also quite familiar, is based on a different sense of timing. It gradually takes over (if you are a typically stressed employee of the kind working within many demanding organisations) when you are some days into your holiday or vacation. You find yourself becoming less driven to move on to the next thing and less reliant on your watch. You start to do things at a different pace. You eat when you are hungry (rather than at say 1pm or whatever your organisational day dictates) and sleep as long as makes sense to your body rather than to your alarm clock. You find a rhythm in the day or the activity which is more systemic. A more qualitative discernment of a whole range of factors replaces the single-mindedness of objective time. This is a more inclusive approach to timing where things fit together in a more synchronistic way.

The Greeks called this kind of time’kairos’, and we are choosing to call seasonal time. This is the time when all the factors come together in the moment. The right time within the objective time frame can be checked by the watch or reference to the timetable or schedule (e.g. Am I in time for the 9:14am train to London? And will the Olympic stadium be completed in time for the 2008 Olympic Games?) In seasonal time, the question is one of timing, and that has to be discerned rather than checked. Interestingly, in the French language the word for time is the same as the word forweather (i.e. temps). If you are waiting to harvest a field of wheat, it is a matter of timing. Clearly it is dependent on the maturity of the grain, but also on the moisture (rain), air pressure (wind), availability of labour, the weather you anticipate in the coming period of time (weather forecast), the time of day, perhaps the day of the week (for availability of labour) and so on. The right time to harvest cannot be predicted a year beforehand because it depends on a range of variables. There is less susceptibility to forced pace or burn-out in seasonal time - and yet it can be surprisingly efficient because it involves the art of taking the differing pace of various elements into account as a whole. The more complex the situation and the larger the number of stakeholders, the more relevant seasonal time becomes as a governing time system.

In the world as it is, dominated by objective time, you could ask if it would it be possible to run a multi-national corporation on seasonal time? We would prefer to put the question the other way round: If the senior leadership of the organisation is not reading the variables in seasonal time, what long-term future do you think their organisation would have? Market places are seasonal in nature. So are financial cycles, social movements and environmental balances.

This is an idea whose time has come - is an example of a statement in seasonal time. Seasonal time has a fundamental and necessary place in the health and well-being of individuals, families, organisations and society as a whole. The advantages of seasonal time are inclusion, rhythm and pace - along with an inner sense of participation and direction that is coherent with the events that are going on externally around one. Our thinking is that both seasonal and objective time systems are necessary to succeed in the modern world.

Without seasonal time in strategic or visionary thinking, the probability of becoming marginalised is very high. In seasonal time, as in all living things, there is ebb and flow. Analysts, who are often bound in objective time, want to see a consistent demonstration of quarterly increases in profit that meet, or exceed, the declared business plan. Shackling a business in objective time in this way is an enormously demanding task - but one that faces corporate leaders everywhere. This is generally resolved by attempting to drive the results in focussed objective time, which is not only stressful but can result in short-term decisions which are counterproductive to the overall growth cycle within seasonal time. We believe the skill and capacity to move fluently between objective and seasonal time is essential for good leadership and the long-term success of any corporation.

The light side of seasonal time is its sustainability. Life has its own natural pace and rhythm, and when you go with that it takes less effort to achieve more, and you can keep on going without stress or fear of burn-out. Effectively, you push the swing at just the right moment for maximum effect and efficiency. The shadow side, however, is its impact on the way people think about their personal responsibility and accountability. Going with the flow can be fine but it tends to dull challenging the status quo and leads to an acceptance of traditional limitations which may or may not be valid. The key question is:  what factors are included in the discernment of how things come together? With a dulled sense of challenge one may be distracted by the more obvious but less significant factors. Less ‘civilised’ tribal people, who understand seasonal time so well in the way they sustain their lives, almost invariably become subject to objective time and all that involves when they encounter it. This is because seasonal time is so inclusive. Even though aspects of their quality of life may be significantly lowered by the fruits of objective time, they tend to include rather than challenge the changes they encounter.

INTERNAL TIME SYSTEMS

So far we have been considering two external systems of time, both of which use externals to determine the ‘right’ time. With objective time the right time is measured - by checking against the clock, calendar or timetable. The right time is discerned in seasonal time by reading the ebb and flow and a range of signs that things are coming together. The arrival of the swallows is a sign of the coming of spring…

There are also two main inner experiences of time. The more memory-bound inner time system we are calling recalled time, and the more presence-bound and in-the-moment system we are calling immediate time. Although both the external systems of time can be experienced through either of the internal experiences of time - objective time and recalled time are generally more often linked, whilst seasonal time and immediate time are more usually strongly related to each other. The relationship between them may be depicted as follows:

The dynamics of relationship between different time systems

RECALLED TIME

Recalled time is memory-bound. Memory of what is required, and what is not required, structure the thinking and experience in recalled time. Project management is traditionally and effectively managed within recalled time. By keeping to the budget and the timeline as defined for the project, we get to the result. We don’t use wasted energy re-thinking and re-defining the plan continually. Instead we attend to whatever the plan says is now required. This gives focus and co-ordination. Also, it is favoured by management because it can be measured. By setting targets and performance indicators it is possible to keep track of progress from a distance. This can keep people on task and simplify their roles. It also makes people more easily replaced. Recalled time calls for reliability rather than innovation. The underlying principles are plan formulation, target setting, measurement and gap-closing. Where the task is more technical (rather than adaptive) and where the starting conditions and assumptions remain reasonable stable, then recalled time flourishes.

The handicap is that within recalled time it is difficult to adapt to changing conditions. When we eventually get the result we have been aiming for, what we have achieved may no longer be as relevant as it seemed at the outset. Market conditions, competitor positions, customer needs, new products or services, financial constraints and so may have changed. Or perhaps the assumptions on which the plan was based have changed without us realising the impact. It may be that the period during which we assume a change will revert to ‘normal’ is just too great. Think how businesses waited assuming things would come back to normal with the sudden hike of oil prices in 2005. Some are only really re-structuring their cost base a year later. And it may be that opportunities, rather than misfortunes, are missed. The handicap of recalled time is adherence to the remembered plan and ignoring of inevitability of the changing conditions.

REACTIVE TIME (within Recalled Time)

There are two aspects to recalled time - reactive time and reflective time. Both depend on recollection but they play out in different ways in practice, depending on the nature of participation and awareness.

When living in reactive time, there is immediate reaction or response to the situation. There are endless situations where this is necessary to health and well-being. Recalled time is required, for example, when driving a car and safety depends on fast reactions in the moment. The dangerous time is when we are learning to drive and we react too slowly to the situation. Many ball games are played in this time frame and are hugely enjoyable because of it, particularly if you are well co-ordinated physically. Reactive time involves learnt skills that are recalled rapidly - and should not be confused with spontaneity. When you look at it more closely you will find that many of our daily activities are managed in reactive time, and you hardly notice them. Getting dressed, brushing your teeth, walking, drinking tea, driving the car. During much of this time you are on automatic pilot and you hardly noticed you did them. If you had to think them all through (as when first learning to drive a car) it would take a huge amount of time and effort to do basic everyday things.

The gift of reactive time is speed and simplicity. It is based on the fact that past experience (in the form of what has been thought and felt) is recalled so quickly. Thought is much faster than thinking. When you touch the hot plate on the cooker, you remove your hand before you have time to think. It is an automatic learnt response that serves you well. It is only when things go wrong (for example if you trip when you are walking, spill your tea or the car brakes don’t work) that something else is required. This signals a need for time shift into reflective time or immediate time. Without that shift, the handicap of rapid reaction compounds the problem. Within reactive time, when it does not work, because it is so quick, it tries the same thing again. It is the rapid reactions, without reflective checking of the intentions involved, that leads us into arguments. Once the initial offence has occurred, each assumes they are right and the other is wrong, and the repeated reactions of this kind lead to breakdown.

REFLECTIVE TIME (within Recalled Time)

When reactive time fails, more awareness is needed. Reflective time is one obvious way of achieving that greater awareness. It is surprising how often this time switch is not made. There is a reason for this. Recalled time has roots in external measurement. Because of the inherent efficiency of co-ordination it engenders in thinking, the experience within recalled time is that things are continually speeding up. Without noticing how it came about, people find themselves servants to clocks, timetables, and schedules. The more successful we are in organisational terms, and the higher up we go in the hierarchy, the less objective time people seem to have. We call it ‘time sickness’. (My colleague David Kantor calls it’temporal madness’). Executives find themselves not only doing emails on the weekends, but on the train, or as they eat via a Blackberry or cell phone. Time, performance and reward seem inseparable. Decisions are tied back to an earlier plan, or a variation of the plan. The inner objective time engine is hard to stop. ‘Rush hour’ is an example. Being stuck in a traffic jam on a motorway, or an airport runway, seems unbearable. Really, of course, it should be called ’slow hour’ not ‘rush hour’. Chronological time ticks along at the same speed, externally we travel more slowly - but internally we cannot stop the recalled time engine which speeds up. It seems to be continually informing us of where we should be according to the schedule. It all depends on recollection, of course - of the time, plan, schedule or timetable - and is tied into thought (past thinking) and the associated past feelings (’felts’).

It is necessary to break out of the shackles of reactive time to experience the benefits of reflective time. In reflective time there is the chance to let the field lie fallow for a period of regeneration. In reactive time the field would be supplemented with fertiliser to produce increasing yields within a shorter time. Instead reflection is like time out. Here there is the chance to review, to reconsider, to learn, to plan and to appreciate. It is like having a conscious mind to monitor the automatic processes that necessarily run most of the activity. Reactive time without occasional periods of reflective time will lead to breakdown.

Similarly, living in reflective time without periods in reactive time will result in detachment and ineffectiveness because one is necessarily disengaged in reflective time. The healthy cycle of learning is one that moves between the two.

IMMEDIATE TIME

Stepping from recalled time into immediate time is stepping from a world that is structured by the past into a world of current and first-hand experience. In immediate time, what is present is primary, and spontaneity becomes possible. In immediate time you start from where you are in the present, rather than finding your bearings in relation to the schedule. You engage by becoming more centred in the present, and what you discern physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually in your presence. In a dynamic situation, sportsmen sometimes refer to a peak immediate experience as being ‘in the zone’, and thereby incorporating intuitive as well as conscious information in passing the ball to another team member. This is not based on playing the percentages but on ‘knowing’ the other player is there, and is one description of being in immediate time. Engagement, awareness and participation are determining factors in this experience and we are using consumed time and proprioceptive time to distinguish the internal experience of immediate time.

CONSUMED TIME (within Immediate Time)

By entering consumed time you dive into the experience and get the first-hand feel of what is involved. You let go of how it might or should be, and experience it directly. A first experience is often had in consumed time, and for that reason infants spend far longer in this time frame than most adults who tend to repeat experiences. Whether an adult or a child, the first experience of say horse-riding may be nothing like you imagined it would be: the size of the animal; the awkwardness of balancing; the lack of control and yet dependence on the horse; and so on. And having spent some time in consumed time, engrossed and absorbed in the experience, it may be very hard to correlate this with chronological or objective time. “I just don’t know how long we were there”, “I was too involved to notice”, “time stood still”, or”it was beyond time”. These may be descriptions of intense involvement in consumed time. It implies spontaneity rather than a reaction. A little consumed time goes a long way. In established relationships it may be called quality time - a period of real engagement out of recalled time and directly engaging with the other person.

Typically, when people are appointed to a new role, they call on their past experience to propose changes to improve the situation they are entering. Often people are rewarded directly for doing so, but if not they may anticipate benefit from career advancement for making a positive impact on the situation. If they have reflected well and learnt from their past experience then their ideas will have some weight. No two circumstances are the same, however, and it is by entering consumed time that one may begin to understand why things are working in this situation in the way they now are. This is the great value of living in consumed time - becoming grounded in the immediate and the present. It is about getting your hands dirty and actually getting involved enough to get the inside feeling.

The handicap of staying in immediate time is losing a sense of perspective and losing an awareness of what is beyond your immediate sphere of activity. For this one needs a different kind of awareness that may be provided through proprioceptive time.

PROPRIOCEPTIVE TIME (within Immediate Time)

Proprioception involves being consciously aware of what you are doing as you do it. It implies being aware of the action of memory in the moment (which allows for recalled time but takes us beyond it) and is reflexive enough to see the degree of involvement (which allows for consumed time but goes beyond that). Living within proprioceptive time is highly demanding and highly generative. A systemic thinker who is centred in proprioceptive time will be more likely to see new opportunities and options in the moment, based on where we are now rather than where we ought to be. It opens the doors to a different kind of current time monitoring, rather than the historic-based (performance indicator audit) checking that recalled time depends upon.

This is the hardest time system to enter because the structure and conditions are little understood. It is not possible to enter without what we have called a ‘container’ (or field of heightened awareness), and it is therefore dependent on container-building skills. Secondly it is dependent on an active scrutiny of your own participation in generating what you appreciate and admire in a situation (the light), and what you deplore and reject (the shadow). This implies, exploring assumptions, realigning thinking and stance according to changing conditions and enquiring without being committed to the outcome. A combination of innocence and wisdom in proprioceptive time is particularly generative.

The great contribution of proprioceptive time is an understanding of timing in complex situations with a high number of stakeholders and a high level of ambiguity. Its disadvantage is the high level of energy required to engage those currently living in other time systems in order to employ what has been generated effectively.

PAST, PRESENT AND VISIONARY THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE

There is an important relationship between time and visionary thinking about the future. In recalled time, which is memory-bound, the future is essentially an extrapolation of the past. This is a constraint which results, for example, in growth targets (like a 10% increase in market share or profits) being presented as if they were strategic thinking. If you shift, however, into immediate time you move from extrapolation into discernment. The potential lies in the changing conditions you discern, which leads to a different kind of visionary thinking. The root of this is the different relationship between past, present and future in immediate time as against recalled time. In recalled time the past gone and time only moves forward into the future (which like an elusive rainbow it never reaches). In immediate time, by contrast, the future can best be described as unfolding into the present, and the past provides orientation.

FLUENCY WITH TIME

Objective and seasonal time are both important, but for an organisation to realise its potential in a sustainable, inclusive and efficient way, it has to get the balance right. We find that most for-profit organisations are performance-driven within objective time, and as a result fall short of their potential. They are pre-occupied with objective time, which they experience internally through recalled time. As a result, people who have worked together for years hardly know each other. They have been living in recalled time, concentrating on the work or the plan, and saw each other largely objectively through this lens. Without taking attention away from the task, we begin by creating a contained relationship which has more intensity and engagement, thereby increasing the presence, participation and awareness which allow for the internal experience of immediate time. This is the route to allowing seasonal time into the everyday experience at work. These containers of immediate engagement are initially created within pockets of chronological measured time. These could last an hour, a day or a week, but they are bounded experimental conversations where a different discipline is employed. The quality of conversation is raised from monologue, debate or discussion, through conversation and into dialogue. By learning to move freely through these structures of conversation and thinking together, we free up a corresponding ease of movement between time systems which enables balance and health.

Peter Garrett, Chipping Campden, 2006

RELATED PAPERS by Peter Garrett:

Leadership Coaching and Time Fluency
The Ground out of which Time Arises
Serving Time – Dialogue in Prisons
Why time matters to you, me and the Earth

REFERENCES:

Time Shifting by Stephan Rechtschasson
Flow by Mihaly