The dimension of Tempo describes the pace at which our efforts can move, or need to, and whether that pace is imposed or shared. A Craft-level change can be pushed too quickly or too slowly, regardless of which depth it sits at. A grand-strategic question can be too rushed or too drawn out, independent of the vantage and its native pacing.
How tempo can shape and be shaped
Mutual entrainment is a particular form of coordination where the rhythms and tugs of two or more activities, are themselves able to align and maintain synchrony with one another. Entrainment describes the way pendulum clocks on a shared wall, or fireflies in a colony, lock into a common rhythm, with no conductor directing. This is a temporal version of the emergent flocking behavior of thousands of birds; and independent cohesion of individuals. For humans, and teams, collaborating by aligning the individual goals toward a common purpose, this happens naturally, but at its own tempo.
If we push a change too far beyond that rhythm, we disrupt nature’s choreography. Gradual shifts can be absorbed, but abrupt unnatural shifts, imposed all at once or irregularly, are the enemy of cohesion.
Impedance (resistance and reactance) explains what happens when change is pushed too fast, rather than collaboratively. Reactance stores and shapes that change effort (the energy), and rather than dissipating it, pushes back. Resistance opposes the effort, burning it off and wasting it.
A well-designed change effort, follows the native tempo (which may differ from team to team), and shapes the timing so the energy doesn’t arrive all at once, often by observing and understanding the team, and by enrolling them in their change (and hopefully by also making the team the ones to benefit from the change).
Push too fast on any team and it is likely to react with a delayed counter-response, first described by Jack Brehm. In the meeting the response appears to be compliance, but active resistance or defiance follows once the meeting ends. Force applied against a system’s native rhythm doesn’t achieve the intended goals, it gets stored and released later, usually at a more costly time.
Fast loop and slow loop learning, Chris Argyris and Donald Schön’s distinction, traces back further to cybernetic theorist W. Ross Ashby’s thermostat example. A thermostat that turns heat on or off to maintain a room’s temperature, is fast-loop learning; correcting the perceived problem, with no ability to question the setting itself. A person who changes the setting, is slow-loop learning, revising the governing structure for the problem. Fast-loop is a single-loop, tactical correction made inside an existing structure. Slow-loops are part of a double-loop structure, the slow-loops answer the harder question of whether the structure itself is the problem.
Argyris and Schön found that organizations reliably default to (cheaper, quicker, habitual, and more visible) single-loop corrections, and avoid (more costly, slower, unaccustomed, and less visible) double-loop questioning. The slow-loop challenges the people who built the structure, making fast-loop the more comfortable alternative.
The right response, but the wrong pace
Depth establishes that a decision correct at one scope can be wrong at another. Tempo makes the parallel claim about pace: a response correct at one tempo can be wrong at another.
A hospital emergency department determines that its triage process needs a structural overhaul, a genuine double-loop, slow-loop question. Leadership reacts with fast-loop urgency: a new protocol is rolled out the following week, with no pilot, no staff input, no time for the change to find its own rhythm against an active department’s existing pace. The staff comply, while administrators are watching, but they revert to the old habits within a month. The determination was correct. The vantage was correct. The tempo was wrong, and that mistake undid everything else.
Applying tempo
- Name the tempo a question needs before choosing how to answer it. Observe and understand if the problem, or the team, needs a fast-loop solution or a slow-loop one.
- Enroll the teams you’re asking to do the work. A change too far outside the native pace becomes more disruptive the harder you push; the teams are the masters of their craft, start small, allow them time to learn new habits, and open new feedback paths.
- Watch for compliance that only exists while someone is watching. Ostensible compliance, followed by quiet reversion, is the signature of reactance, not buy-in.
- Distinguish between a fast-loop symptom and a slow-loop cause. Recurring tactical fixes that never resolve anything are often standing in for a structural question nobody has asked yet.
- Protect slow-loop reviews with their own, dedicated schedule. Fast, visible corrections will crowd slower, more deliberate ones because they (at least appear to be) more productive, and lower in cost.
Pitfalls to watch for
Treating every urgent request as a fast-loop matter by default. Urgency is a property of the moment, not a reliable signal of the question’s tempo; a slow-loop question that feels urgent is still a slow-loop question.
Mistaking a single successful effort’s tempo as proof of the team’s capture-range (the range in which non-entrained teams can become so). This range varies by context, such as by what is being asked to change. One success is a sample-size of one. Observe and understand, enroll the teams involved, and help them discover the right rhythm.
Every industry, every organization, and every vantage has a native tempo. Find a way to work with the tempo (e.g. dividing up work differently, prioritizing adequately, restructuring teams or value streams) and resist forcing teams to move faster or slower than the point where they are effectively able. You may still get your results, but it will be at a higher cost.
References and further reading
- Ancona, Deborah, and Chee-Leong Chong. “Entrainment: Pace, Cycle, and Rhythm in Organizational Behavior,” Research in Organizational Behavior, 1996.
- Brehm, Jack W. A Theory of Psychological Reactance, Academic Press, 1966.
- Argyris, Chris, and Donald Schön. Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, Addison-Wesley, 1978.
- Argyris, Chris. “Double Loop Learning in Organizations,” Harvard Business Review, September-October 1977.