Coordination of Differing Time Structures
Different functions in organisations (sales, accountancy, …) have, through their self-organisation as systems, something like their ‘individual time structure’. They actually ‘tick’ differently! The guiding process quality focus has also emerged from the necessity to organise processes quickly as well as slowly, thoroughly as well as shoddily. The guiding process networking occupies itself with coordinating these differences. This means that every decision-making process focusing on quality must take care about what quality requirements accumulate in the networked areas. It is no use to be quick when the others must rely on faultlessness and vice versa.
It is often the case in organisations that their own logic, no matter if of a person, team or area, is passed on to others without due reflection. It is enormously important for the collaboration at the interface that this naïve perception is abandoned. Systems find it particularly easy to underestimate the environmental influence caused by the respective ‘individual time structure’, (sometimes you can even see this when observing two people who are attempting to find a common tempo during a walk). The consequences are misunderstandings, disappointments, working to frustrate each other and alternating dominance aspirations. Often such conflicts are not recognised as ‘individual time structure’ conflicts of systems, and the underlying premises about what quality consists of, but rather, the conflicts are personalised (“They cannot work together!”). This makes them unsolvable and sustained.