Time by Design

How effective individuals, teams, and organizations routinely communicate slow to go fast, and how time as a feature of human experience can actually be designed.

Speed in collective action, like teamwork or organizing, is never simply a time-based issue. While conventional theory relies on time-based interventions to achieve speed, this approach typically fails. In Time by Design, Dawna Ballard shows how speed is actually a function of the relationship between time and communication, or chronemics.

Ballard identifies two communication design logics—fast and slow—that reflect contrasting beliefs about how communication works to support urgent, time-sensitive work demands. Fast communication design logics are linear, short-term in orientation, and treat time in interaction as transactional. Slow communication design logics are nonlinear, long-term in orientation, and treat time in interaction as transcendent. Given these distinct approaches, the book offers a practical toolkit that shows the reader how the two chronemic designs can be used in complementary fashion—and how effective teams, communities, and organizations routinely communicate slow to go fast.