When supporting an organisation, a team or an individual, the question of time often comes up in conversations, questions and doubts…
How long will it take to “change”? Is it urgent? Or, on the contrary, will it never happen, and should we accept that (eternity plus a day, as some say of a large French state-owned company…)? Or will it be necessary to part with the entity or person concerned, since the expected change will not happen?
Our societies increasingly live in the moment. The moment of communication – or rather of information. Because to communicate, there must be at least two people paying attention, wanting a relationship. We want information, right away. And we want the information we send to be taken into account, right away too.
Yet time is not only about immediacy.
Time is a subjective resource
As extreme cases of human activity – since they touch the very lives of individuals and societies – military activities experience, like many others, the tension between short-term urgency and the need for duration. A tension, but also an incompressibility, that the “Caïd” of the 1st Tirailleurs Regiment describes with talent (those who have read his books will have appreciated the quality of his writing) in the latest issue of Inflexions, the review published by the French Army.
Jean Michelin describes three times.
There is the time of manoeuvre, in which time is a resource to be traded: “a delaying manoeuvre consists of trading ground for time; adjusting the speed at which units advance amounts to bartering time for security”.
There is the time of people and experience, which is invested: “here too, time is an incompressible object that one agrees to invest in order to obtain human resources properly equipped to meet the challenges of their roles at every level”.
And then there is capability time, which sets the pace for the design and production of new equipment, and which is the subject of judgements: “it is now (the subordinates) who are the most impatient to receive a particular new vehicle, a particular new rifle, and who are irritated by the slowness – deemed bureaucratic and therefore unacceptable – shown by their superiors (…). The same soldiers who, yesterday, on patrol in the middle of the desert, were fuming at their superiors’ demands…”.
Three dimensions, then: a resource that is traded – for physical things (ground) or not (security) – and that is invested. And which has a strong subjective value, specific to each person.
Time is a scarce resource because it is incompressible, certainly. But while companies talk about budget constraints at every level, they rarely consider the added value of time, which cannot be measured only with a stopwatch or a “timesheet”. Too often, it is merely a “material” constraint used to draw up the most rational schedule possible. At the risk of neglecting the value of its subjective dimension, specific to each person. That of the executive as well as that of the operator.
Because time belongs both to organisations and to people, to projects and to perceptions. And too rarely do we realise that “the only master of time is its first user, that is, always the lowest echelon. (…) The one who may take the time – almost nothing, five seconds – to watch a doe cross the road (to) find out whether those five seconds will allow him to detect a movement heralding an ambush or whether, in the end, it was just a doe passing by”[i].
And if the “lowest echelon” is master on the road, the decision-maker is master at the strategic level. He or she must therefore also be able to choose to take the “five seconds” (which will, admittedly, last longer…).
Managers’ time
In companies, some are tempted to align people’s time with the time of organisations, starting with their own, at the risk of wearing themselves out. And of forgetting their added value.
Because who has not seen, in their own company or another, the inability of the decision-makers they work with – or that they themselves are – to free up time?
To step back, to work on tomorrow. And more often than twice a year, when the pressure of day-to-day business eases, at the start of summer or after the budget has been closed.
And quite simply every day, despite a diary that structures all their available time: to stop by the coffee machine, drop in on a leaving party, or respond to a request in the corridor… To take the pulse, find out what is going on, change perspective, and give a few signs of recognition, too. Or to face, calmly, the inevitable unexpected.
Do these managers, deprived of the freedom to allocate their time, experience – like the writer facing the blank page – the anguish of free hours?
Do they feel obliged, towards their superiors or even their teams, to justify their added value, as if it could only be expressed through permanent overload? Just as some ask their remote-working teams to justify their “output” by checking their connection time?
Or have they forgotten that they are also, at least in part, “creators”? And the drivers of collective dynamics that feed on interactions, which are indispensable conditions for collective output.
These “decision-makers” (because if they do not decide how to allocate their time, what do they decide?) should more often consider their time as a resource. And therefore as something that can be a source of interactions. Quantitatively and qualitatively.
Time for resistance to change?
The people I work with often ask me whether it is possible to change someone, and therefore the collective situation in which that person is a stakeholder. Or the group itself, because the complexity of situations never rests on a single “culprit” (even if many give in to this temptation and accompany the question with a form of resignation, giving the impression that they are convinced that “people don’t change”).
For the consultant that I am, and for my clients, this question of time can also be a source of ambiguity, or even concern…
For the consultant, succeeding quickly means, at first sight, depriving oneself of lasting resources. But it also means demonstrating one’s effectiveness. So should one favour the short term or the long term?
And for the client, who is legitimately concerned about budgets and therefore looking for quick results, changing the organisation and practices too quickly can also lead to haste, or even to rupture…
So a balance must be found. And those I support know my recommendation: achieve quick results while building a lasting relationship.
As for each person’s capacity to change, Dr Patrick Clervoy, in the same issue of Inflexions and drawing on a study by three American psychologists, gives reasons to be optimistic about the famous “resistance to change”.
Susceptible to the idea of an “end of history”, we tend to think that there comes a moment when things stop evolving: “the conclusion is that, in general, each person underestimates their capacity [to change] over the years. We are incapable of imagining that in the future we will be different from what we are today. We overlook the idea that we will have transformed ourselves in order to adapt”[ii]. And of course, if we are not capable of it ourselves, why should others be?
What this article also makes clear is that this difficulty – this “resistance to change” – is not only linked to the changes of habit expected, but to a reflex that is, paradoxically, salutary. Because projecting oneself into the unknown makes many people anxious. Whereas the “stability” of a situation that does not change provides a point of reference. This scepticism towards change would therefore not express a refusal, but the very classic discomfort with uncertainty.
That is why the time of change cannot be merely that of rigid planning, but above all that of a regular and sincere conversation, in order to steer and navigate between the inevitable squalls that will appear along the way.
Do not create a sense of urgency
This is also why, in change management and given this tension between haste and eternity, it is surprising to see John Kotter’s recommendations still taught without much reservation in training courses on the subject. In particular the first one, which is to “establish a sense of urgency”.
The intention is understandable: to create a “need to change”. But does one really manage well under constraint, and in particular by manipulating fears? Fear of uncertainty or even of the unknown, but also fear of the consequences of the transformations expected or imagined – because when we do not know, we often imagine the worst…
Sometimes urgency is real. When a child is crossing the road and is about to be run over, there is no time to hesitate or attempt some teaching. When under fire, danger is present, and of course one must act in a determined and coordinated way.
But when the crisis lasts – and every change is a “crisis”, just as every change in organisations is a process that takes at least a little time – directive, authoritarian and isolated management has neither legitimacy nor effectiveness.
It may justify the power of a “providential man” (the term also applies to women), whether the executive or their adviser. But it does not strengthen their authority, still less their legitimacy.
Moreover, the directive management that goes with the appeal to urgency always creates fractures, in interpersonal relationships as in the social body. Fractures that always then require time and energy to be invested in order to restore harmony, or even trust – when it is not too late.
That is why this systematic appeal to urgency is neither ethical nor effective.
And it is ill-suited to a world in which resources, human and material, are scarce and therefore precious. Resources that should not be burned, but looked after.
Time resources that can be discussed openly, just like financial ones.
Time for creativity
However, refusing systematic urgency is not a plea for “laissez-faire”.
Let us take a short detour via the dialogue between the musician Karol Beffa and the mathematician Cédric Villani[iii].
Both faced with the challenges of creation, they seem to agree about time constraints, despite the differences between their fields.
Research time can justify the long term: “I can see that there may be an interest, for the community, in paying a scientific researcher for several years even if he produces nothing, because it is thought that what he will one day produce may be of exceptional importance”.
But artistic creation must obey other rules: “It is hard to see what collective interest there would be in granting an income to a composer, or more generally to an artist, regardless of their creative projects”.
A point of view that runs counter to that of people in “creative” roles – or roles claimed as such – who sometimes call for a total absence of constraints. Ideally financial ones, even if this world no longer allows it. And at least time constraints (which often amounts to the same thing when those concerned are paid).
So why this detour?
A company executive is certainly not a long-term “researcher”. But he or she must be a “creator”, within a set of missions that go beyond, in time, the steering of day-to-day business.
A creative function that many neglect.
Sometimes because a penny-pinching organisation asks them only to execute. “Penny-pinching”, because why pay someone who would merely consolidate reporting tables and relay precise instructions, in an age of instant communication and “big data”?
But also because they may have forgotten it themselves. And therefore no longer devote the right amount of time to it.
A time that is limited, certainly, but special.
The hare and the tortoise
You probably know John Cleese, one of the pillars of Monty Python, that particularly creative troupe (though perhaps this is a forgotten reference because it is dated, which would be a pity).
In his book “Creativity”[iv], and in several talks for business leaders[v], he argues that time accounts for two of the four keys to creativity: space, time, time and humour.
Why twice? Because, to unleash one’s creativity, he recommends alternating between the “hare brain” and the “tortoise mind”.
The hare’s is analytical; the tortoise’s works through emergence, images, analogies… And it is the combination of the two that makes productive creativity possible.
Giving oneself time, in order to use the tortoise’s, including by guaranteeing the serenity of the moment with the first lever: space. A closed office, a beach, a forest… To let the mind wander.
But also giving this creative time some constraints, so as to switch into “hare mode” and regularly call on the analytical mind, which looks for justifications and data, and tests the coherence of the whole…
Including, when the complexity of a situation paralyses you, by accepting – under pressure from the hare waiting for the final product – the “panic” (“get your panic in early”). To give yourself more energy. But, unlike Kotter, not for others. For yourself.
And above all, by alternating the two.
The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi praises “flow” (in the sense of a less controlled time). And for him, creativity involves five stages (preparation, incubation, insight, evaluation, elaboration). And, unlike the psychology researcher, John Cleese also knows the necessities of production within a limited time.
But both agree in describing the creative process as “more recursive than linear”[vi] – and this temporal characteristic is the most important one.
Because it is indeed the combination of the two times, and the two modes, that enables creativity in the service of others. Not the clash between them.
And Cleese recalls Einstein’s words: “The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be ‘voluntarily’ reproduced and combined (…) this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought – before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others”[vii].
True creativity – or at least the kind that meets major challenges – can therefore rarely be expressed “on the spot”, in the moment, when the results have to be communicated to others immediately. It needs time for elaboration. Then for formalisation. And often for further developments, before returning to the analytical mind.
This sustained creativity must therefore be practised in the short term, alternating “tortoise” hours and “hare” hours. But also, why not, over the span of a professional life.
That is in any case, implicitly, one of the recommendations of Karol Beffa and Cédric Villani, who argue that learning benefits from being carried out under time constraints. In particular when they champion the advantages of the French “classes préparatoires” (intensive post-secondary preparatory classes), in science as in the humanities, to “get to grips with a great many fields without having to specialise too early”… A dense period that builds solid foundations, so as to be ready to take risks: because “it is with the tree, symbol of stability, that one builds the canoe, symbol of escape”[viii].
And this is probably, to return to military matters, one of the benefits of alternating between “operational time” and “staff time” (or training). Whereas in companies, operational time is often that of the first years, while the time that follows may remain, forever, devoted to steering.
A “steering” in which the added value of the five seconds taken along the way, to wonder about the importance of a weak signal, is often forgotten.
Time for conversation
To find the right balance in allocating time, within the company and for oneself, one should therefore not seek negotiation or arbitration, which too often result in one time dominating the other. And often that of the organisation dominating that of people. But rather coexistence, through alternation and complementarity.
The first step towards this is probably the exercise of “chronostructure”. Becoming aware of the time that passes and that one allocates, or of which one is deprived. Voluntarily or not. In order to realise the added value of each allocation of this resource.
The second is being able to talk freely about the time one trades, invests and devotes to creative work… A time that certainly has an economic value, but also a subjective and even emotional one. And whose control, or lack of it, can lead to frustration or, on the contrary, to voluntary commitment.
A conversation rather than a negotiation, which is too often perceived as the victory of one over the other.
A conversation with oneself, perhaps with a sparring partner. But also with others, at dedicated times, on key occasions, or throughout the year. Deliberately or “by chance”.
What if we took the time to talk about it?
[i] Jean Michelin, « L’incompressibilité du temps » (The incompressibility of time). Inflexions no. 54, « Le temps » (Time), 2023
[ii] Patrick Clervoy, « La difficulté à envisager l’avenir » (The difficulty of envisaging the future). Inflexions no. 54, « Le temps », 2023
[iii] Karol Beffa and Cédric Villani, « Les coulisses de la création » (Behind the scenes of creation), Flammarion, 2015
[iv] John Cleese, “Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide”, Hutchinson, 2020
[v] The most famous, and most discussed, is “John Cleese on Creativity in Management”, 1991, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvKeu46jgwo
[vi] Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention”, HarperCollins, 1996
[vii] John Cleese, “Creativity”, op. cit. Einstein’s words come from a letter published by Jacques Hadamard in “The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field”, Princeton University Press, 1945.
[viii] Karol Beffa and Cédric Villani, op. cit.
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