Our thanks goes out to John Furey of Mindtime for a great presentation, Doris and Harald of FAS.research for hosting the meeting in their office, and all who attended. John’s presentation and the discussion that followed offered a unique perspective on time and the role our differing relationships to time impacts collaboration. A key idea that emerged is that each of us has a TimeStyle, which deeply influences our way of seeing the world, ordering our work, and relating to one another. By understanding and accepting others’ TimeStyles, we can better communicate and work together. You can learn more at his site Mindtime.com.
Here are some other ideas and tips that came out of the presentation and discussion:
- There are three basic TimeStyles – Past, Present, and Future – and each has a consistent set of personality characteristics, even across cultures. Knowing someone’s TimeStyle is a good window into their personality. And easy to grasp since the system is so simple.
- John’s experience is that people gravitate to others with the same TimeStyle. The TimeStyle make up of the Leaguers who took the TimeStyle assessment bears this out. About 90% are Strong Futures.
- One reason that people self-organize into TimeStyle groups is that everyone with a given TimeStyle communicates at the same tempo. People prefer to speak to others that speak at the same tempo.
- In cross-cultural settings, people often self-organize into TimeStyle groups rather than by culture or language. This preference appears to be very strong.
- A person’s TimeStyle represents the value they bring to collaboration. It is also what they will value most.
- Each TimeStyles brings not only the values which are the virtue of that TimeStyle, but also a unique perspective which simply cannot be duplicated by the other TimeStyles.
- In creating great teams, we must overcome our tendency to want others with the same TimeStyle on the team. We must balance our team in many ways including by TimeStyle.
- In organizational life, keep in mind that each functional area is usually dominated by a particular TimeStyle. We must overcome our tendency to avoid working with other TimeStyles because innovation usually happens when different skills, perspectives, knowledge, and TimeStyles are combined.
Our next meeting is Thursday December 20th. We do not have a speaker
lined up yet. Suggestions welcome!
We hope to see you then to continue our experiment in consciously creating
the social conditions that manifest opportunities for fun, meaningful work,
intellectual stimulation, health, and happiness.
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Member Announcements:
Please contact gorenflo at gmail dot com if you’d like to get in touch with any of the below folks.
Name: Taj Moore
Passion: connecting people and ideas
Needs: work in other countries that pays well
Gifts: strategic creative thinking
Name: Pearl Lee
Passion: people and learning from others’ experience
Needs: English, fundraising, to meet new people, writing and editing help
Gifts: connect people together, analyze situations
Name: Neal Gorenflo
Passion: bring people together, creating social experiences, social creativity
Needs: ideas for Abundance League speakers
Gifts: help with business ideas, strategy, communications
Name: Ray Tobey
Passion: changing the model of leadership from Machiavelli to Gandhi
Needs: advice on geographical information systems
Gifts: Aloo Palak, Daal, help getting you elected
Name: Sharon Hoffman
Passion: connecting people through story, art, media and film
Needs: flash programming to show my photos on my site
Gifts: communication coaching, film recommendations, professional
photography that captures your essence or promotes your business
Name: Tyler Reed
Passion: music, nature, self-knowledge, good food
Needs: advice on running your own business
Gifts: advice on music projects
Name: Sara Townsend
Passion: connecting humans w/ their environment
Needs: learning patience, how to create a website, tour of the city
Gifts: policy wonk, analysis of issues, listening
Name: Nicole Tonti
Passion: people, indigenous cultures, travelling, spirit plant medicine
Needs: connecting with inspiring people
Gifts: come visit! Big Sur, tennis, beauty
Name: Emily Shurr
Passion: book, journal publishing
Needs: a great apartment
Gifts: leadership training, board dynamics
Name: Sue Lebeck
Passion: facilitating innovation
Needs: good wishes for needed anchor people to come on board my project
Gifts: art / image cards w/ demonstration of how to use them to inform you
Name: Harald Katzmair
Passion: explore what we could become instead of who we are
Needs: time
Gifts: introduction to the bird species of the Bay Area
Name: Bosco Ho
Passion: the singularity
Needs: writings
Gifts: dirty stories
Name: Brad Michaels
Passion: creating social benefit for third world communities
Needs: friendship, connection (new to the area), community group contacts
Gifts: creating positive social impact for companies, nonprofits, and
individuals
Name: John Furey
Passion: collaboration
Needs: to connect with people who I can help collaborate
Gifts: creating collaboration
Name: Doris Spielthenner
Passion: people and their cities, urbanism, urban scouting, bikram yoga
Needs: friends to go see art and music shows
Gifts: knowledge of social network analysis, introduction to bikram yoga
Name: Maritza
Passion: changing western culture
Needs: excellent chinese doctor, open to other types of healing
Gifts: computer speakers, come and get them, Right to the City booklet
Name: Casey
Passion: the eco-renaissance, poetry, dance, wilderness, personal
responsibility
Needs: viable work with the environment, use my gifts for the world
Gifts: writing, adventure, companion
One of the reasons I became interested in social sustainability was the ample evidence of manifold value of social capital. It appears to play a fundamental role in determining social outcomes, everything from educational attainment to health to crime seem to be impacted by social capital. And low levels of social capital seemed like the single root of many serious social problems, but addressable in low-tech ways (like Abundance League itself).
