[OSList] Exploring the Principles: Whenever it starts is the right time

Wed Oct 30 08:36:03 PDT 2013

I think it was St Augustine who remarked that he knew exactly what time was
except when he had to explain it. Slippery creature! Raises some interesting
questions, like Who's time? What time? Which time? Some years ago in West
Africa, I learned that the "right time" (as in being ontime) depended
totally on where you were. If you were in the capitol city, one hour +/- was
OK. In a regional center it was 1 day +/-. When out in the bush, it was 1
week +/-. It also seems to be true that time is pretty much what we think it
is. So in a small Midwest town in the US, some people think it is "fast
time" and others are for "slow time." Here's the story. In this small town
about half of the people make their living as farmers. The other half work
in a manufacturing facility. When daylight savings time comes along,
problems arise. The manufacturing folks need to integrate with the national
shipping system to get their products out "on time" - Fast time. Cows on the
other hand don't wear watches, and wouldn't shift their milking time anyhow
- Slow Time. The dividing line is the Main Street, and crossing the street
takes you from fast time to slow time - and you just have to remember which
side of the street you are on. Or something...

When it come to Time in Open Space, my learning has been that emergent
systems create their own time. Which is to say there is a naturally
occurring sense of pacing and flow - all of which have little or nothing to
do with "clock time." 

Harrison 

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

189 Beaucaire Ave. (summer)

Camden, Maine 04843

Phone 301-365-2093

(summer)  207-763-3261

www.openspaceworld.com 

www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)

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From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of paul levy
Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2013 6:56 AM
To: World wide Open Space Technology email list
Subject: [OSList] Exploring the Principles: Whenever it starts is the right
time

Sharing one more of three. Your comments and insights most welcome...

warm wishes

Paul Levy

We can become trapped by all kinds of dogma in our lives. One of them is
start times. Businesses clock people in and out and there are sanctions for
poor timekeeping. We grow up with school timetables and many of us probably
remember being told off or even punished for being late to class.

In music, if the orchestra doesn't start together, the music will not sound
pleasant! Yet, in purely  improvised jazz, anyone can start. We join in as
and when.

In open space, we are encouraged not to get hung up over time. When it
starts is when it is meant to start. The dogma of starting on time is a
dogma of forcing. It becomes another imposed structure. It might turn out we
all do turn up for a session bang on time and start bang on time as well. Or
it might be that some pre-start chit-chat turns out to be just the buzz
needed for us to start a little later.

The start time of an open space session is not set and imposed. The start
time in the agenda is an intention at the time the session is offered. "I'd
like to offer a session on Time Management in the Red Room at 11am. The time
set is experienced as true at the time it is set. And, already the world has
changed; we have moved on, the narrative may shift significantly. One
session may over-run and the follow-on session may wait for those people, or
may not. The right time emerges out of the need of the moment.

This can and does free us up. It offers the chance to be lazily late, or to
simply allow the time to start to emerge as needed by the situation. What
stops this principle descending into a lazily, chaotic programme? According
to Jack Martin Leith, one of the few people who has ventured to critique
open space, it all comes down to awareness. At an open space event there is
a collective responsibility to be aware of the reason the Open Space event
was created and also of the other people attending: "I believe that each
participant should maintain awareness of these outcomes throughout the
conference. This awareness should extend to the conscious use of time and
space, such as starting meetings on time (because people are aware that time
is limited) and not letting them overrun (because they are aware that other
people need the space)." (Reference, with case examples,  here -
http://www.jackmartinleith.com/more-effective-ost-and-rtsc/)

Start time should never be a rule; it is more of an impulse. It's often
remarkable how, on reflection, allowing the start time to "show itself", is
often viewed afterwards as just the right time to start.

This doesn't come easy to those addicted to structure, those who need to
know what lies up ahead in the fixed plan. It comes easier to those who like
to go with the flow, who like to improviser, and also those who are lazy and
also those who are relaxed. Different cultures treat start times differently
and open space conferences that involve a meeting of different cultures can
really show these different views and behaviours in action.

"Whenever it starts is the right time" isn't an invitation to be lazy with
time, nor to never agree a start time and stick to it. It is an invitation
to view start times as emergent.

A group or community, in open space, can often sense together when something
needs to start. And that isn't always the time stated in the programme.

When we live by the principle "whenever it starts is the right time" in open
space, we give permission to others to flow in their own way. We give them
space to be, and in doing that, we also give the community space to be an,
as a result, space for possibility opens more easily. There's another side
to this coin: When a group meets in a circle (physical or symbolic) or a
conversation or to do work together, a collective responsibility can form.
The group becomes an organism, even as it is made up for individuals. The
group can find, often without words, the right time to start. One person can
take the needed in-breath, and then we all start to sing. Sometimes we all
breath together. This is captured beautiful in the words of philosopher,
Rudolf Steiner:

"A healthy social life is found only, when in the mirror of each soul the
whole community finds its reflection, and when in the whole community the
strength of each one is living."

So, the right time to start can be born from one person's impulse, from the
nod between two people, or even from the synchronicity of the whole group.

There's a lovely paradox here that many open space facilitators have failed
to understand. Some people hold firmly to a start time and attempt to uphold
it. They create a dogma out of the start time. And this is also fine. If an
individual manages to persuade or even cajole an entire room into starting
at a fixed time, then this is the right time to start, if the people in the
room follow that lead. Along the line of "it starts when it starts" and "it
starts in exactly three an a half minutes" are all kinds of people, will
impulses and skills of assertiveness. To impose the principle as a rule that
excludes time fixedness is as bad as excluding the principle itself. So some
sessions will start just as planed earlier in the day, down to the last
second and others won't. And both are perfectly lovely.

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