Just like in comedy, timing is everything

But your idea of time isn’t necessarily the same as mine

Last time, I asked whether the predictability that business looks for is always a good thing. If predictability comes as the result of an autocratic system tolerating no debate, or just a stitch-up of some kind, then it has other downsides and is unlikely to last. It’s a bit like groupthink: great for harmony in the short term, but prone to lead to disaster down the line.

Good comedy is often about getting the timing right. The British television comedian Eric Morcambe is well known for characterising his (mock) poor piano playing as: “I'm playing all the right notes—but not necessarily in the right order”. Listening to someone playing badly quickly becomes irritating when our expectations of what comes next are frustrated.

We often see a similar discord in communication between different countries and cultures or between business and government. As Peter Frankopan has elegantly illustrated, for example in his book The Silk Roads, Western and Eastern cultures can display very different ideas about time, meaning that “short term” and “long term” can have very different meanings. This is in part cultural and part a function of the system of government in a particular country - though the two factors are often closely intertwined.

Students of linguistics spend a lot of time examining the different ways in which languages express time. Simple (“google”) translations can conceal big differences in the way concepts are understood. For example, the greeting translated from Greek into English as “good evening” applies from the middle of the day onwards. In Turkish you use a different form of the past tense to describe events which you experienced as opposed to those which you can infer: “he came (and I saw him come)” compared to “he came (I didn’t see but he’s here now)”. In an age where we are increasingly concerned about the veracity of the information we receive, the language’s ability to make clear distinctions looks quite attractive. For now, the important point is simply that we can’t assume that others are thinking about time in the same way that we are. The diplomat’s task, looking from the outside in, is to understand the distinctions without jumping to conclusions.

Who’s in charge - and how they derive their power - may play a big role in influencing whether the future (“progress”) or the past (“our history”) dominates policy and strategy. If history and identity are dominant elements of your political offer, you will be readier to assess today’s developments through the prism of characteristics revealed through past behaviour. If you’re focused on the future and the change you can effect, say with new technologies, you may be dismissive of the past as largely irrelevant. I’ve operated in both worlds and would hesitate to argue that one is inherently superior. But there’s a problem if we’re talking at cross purposes. Brits offering advice to other countries are at risk of not doing enough to avoid being misunderstood: the most well-intentioned of “progressive” initiatives can easily be construed as either patronising or concealing an extractive ulterior motive. The lesson as always is not to assume that we understand each other, even if we are ostensibly speaking the same language.

An absolute (or near absolute) monarchy, say in the Gulf - whatever its other strengths and weaknesses - will tend to have a long-term perspective, as the family aspires to remain in power for a long time and will seek to safeguard its interests for future generations, while others in that society may see reassurance in the continuity. (Some, of course, may not - but they’ll usually find it hard to achieve a critical mass of support.) The dynamics of a Western democracy tend to be governed by the electoral cycle, so long term thinking is much harder. Non-hereditary but also non-democratic regimes may broadly lie in the middle, not subject to regular elections but potentially under more short- or medium-term competitive pressure than an long-established and widely-accepted monarchy. It’s all relative of course: even in an absolute monarchy there may be a range of competing interests within the family, as well as short-term pressures from outside which cannot be ignored. Long term doesn’t mean for ever. Similarly in a Western democracy we see long-term thinking when elected governments devote time and resources to projects which they can’t hope to see completed during their mandate (though even then there may be short term gains in terms of work being created towards the longer-term goal).

A good question to ask when seeking to work with a particular country is where it falls on the continuum between long and short term and how that affects decision-making. There may not be a simple answer: a country may have fairly volatile domestic politics, but a broad consensus on, say, big infrastructure projects. Some institutions may be immune from short-term pressures, others in more contentious sectors, less so. Spending time thinking this through may well avoid costly misunderstandings. Understanding the other’s language can definitely help.

We can often see a disconnect in timing between government and business, with each regarding the other as too short-termist. “Government is driven by the electoral cycle and (even) the latest opinion polls, civil servants move departments too quickly harming continuity.” “Business is only interested in short-term profits) and not by the long-term interests of the country/people/planet”. We hear both kinds of accusation regularly. Can they both be true at the same time?

Among both governments (different countries, even perhaps different parties within the same country) or business (publicly-quoted, private equity, established family businesses and so on) there’s a big variety. Unfortunately many politicians and civil servants not only mistrust business and the profit motive as a matter of principle (would they work unrewarded?), but critically fail to understand that “making money” isn’t a one-size-fits-all concept. Is the company’s priority (at this moment) to expand (grow its “top line”) or to maximise how much profit it makes on whatever it’s doing(the “bottom line”)? What kind of investment does it need to survive, stave off competition and grow? A business will need to offer a certain level of return to attract and keep its investors, just as it will ne make to offer good enough pay and conditions to recruit and retain staff. In all this, timing is central. To contrast two extremes: if you’re running a pop-up shop, your investment will be tied up for a shorter period of time - but will also need to be repaid more quickly- than if you own a steelworks. Understanding the conditions for success and failure in business essentially requires an understanding of timing.

It’s easy to say that long-term thinking is better and to criticise others’ short-termism. But, just as investors in capital-intensive heavy industry are not (all) going to wait decades for a return, so many governments will need to show that long-term projects can also generate shorter term rewards. Getting the balance right isn’t easy either for businesses or governments. As one leader of a successful listed business put it: we are long-term by nature, but if we are to survive into the long term, we need to get the next quarter right. On the other hand, you may be surprised at how much effort governments put in to longer-term projects. That may be because they often don’t say much about them - perhaps precisely because they don’t think voters will pay much attention.

Working with different countries, or across government-business lines within a country, we need to take time to understand what short and long term mean, as well as how these concepts vary across different areas of activity. This calls for both granular analysis and openness to different concepts (and language) of time. If we map out the key decision points and the path up to and after the decision, we can start to build a strategy which meets our own and the other’s objectives without coming up against incompatible timing differences. Otherwise, we risk continuing to play the right notes in the wrong order.