Time density

Time is not like a constant stream; it varies greatly in density. Today, for example, Jenni, Jeanie, Eugene and I were able to formulate a long-term strategy for our off-campus offerings, and solved (imperfectly) some short-term scheduling problems. Besides, there were probably four or five other significant problems that I was able to figure out for myself, again, with great help from other people. So, it was a very-very busy and a very productive Friday; and example of very dense time. Yet some other days feel like walking through deep mud of vaguely unpleasant, irresolvable, and needless problems. The time is thin, watery, and slow. It is filled with people who misunderstand each other, with lost memos and forgotten commitments, with small errors that go unnoticed and cause large problems, with tasks no one wants to do, and no one is sure are needed at all.

How is that possible? How can we work so well together one day, and then things just sort of disintegrate? The machinery of social interaction clearly has different modes, some a lot more efficient and pleasant than others. One day we are capable of very effective communication, lucid thinking, and great ideas. The next day wounded egos, sheer incompetence and ill will take over, and nothing of substance gets done, or things slip backwards. This is not just my personal feelings; I don’t think anyone would seriously dispute the existence of “good days” and “bad days.” The difference between the two can be described as a difference between dense and thin time. Of course, this is oversimplification, because different time density can occur on the same day and be strangely mixed.

But why is that? Why does social time have different quality? My old Honda runs about the same every day. Its performance slightly deteriorates with time, but it won’t run much better, unless I put a new engine in it. If it breaks, you can fix a part, so it works better for a while, but you can always explain why. If human organizations were cars, they would run great for a while, then suddenly stumble and crawl without any visible reasons, then fix themselves and race better than new, then fall apart again. They would never completely stop, but you can’t effectively steer them either. That is not to say that driving skills are unimportant; they certainly are. Different managers will get the same organizations to perform better or worse, on average. However, no one can predict how fast each individual stretch of highway will be covered. Managing an organization is nothing like engineering. We do not really know how things work; we just tinker with these marvelous machines, hoping to get them to work.

I am fortunate too work with very smart, very good-natured people all around me. But groups are very different indeed from individuals. Several good people together may both tremendously increase each other’s creative potential, and the same group may completely cancel each other’s strength and become stuck. Paradoxically, the same group can alternate between the two modes in the course of a week or a day. What we don’t really know is how to increase a likelihood of the former outcome, and decrease that of the latter. Problems that go back many years, and seem intractable, will suddenly resolve themselves without much of an effort. Others that seem insignificant and easily solvable will become monsters that take a lot of time and energy to manage.

So here is my theory. The organizations remain the same, but they encounter different kinds of time. It’s like a vehicle that travels sometimes through the air, sometimes through water, and sometimes in airless space. Because the medium is different, they perform differently, depending on what is the ether through which they move. This week for me, was extremely rich in time textures. A lot of things went right, many things went wrong, and some things went nowhere at all. I know it sounds wacky. That was the intent.