coda

Re-Imaging the World

Coda: A concluding passage or section, falling outside the basic structure of a composition, and added in order to obtain or to heighten the impression of finality.

—The Harvard Dictionary of Music¹

Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.

—Samuel Beckett²

In 1936, Albert Camus wrote in Notebooks that “people can think only in images.”³ This is no doubt an overstatement, but images are important. We like to say that the world is more interconnected than it used to be. When we think about globalization, the eponymous image is that of a globe, a spinning sphere, overlaid with a network of interconnections of which the World Wide Web is a prime example. But that image simply traps us in a spider web of infinite complexity. Too much is going on in too many directions for us to make sense of it all. That is why I think a polyphonic score is a useful organizing image. In the past, when the United States was more of an unrivaled power, it could call the tune. Weaker countries had no choice but to accompany (be in harmony with) what the United States was doing, or pay the price. That still is true, but to a lesser extent. With the rise China, India, Brazil, and the developing world, the United States becomes one player in a large polyphonic, polyrhythmic score. It is still a major player, but not the only one. Other countries want to decide for themselves what part they should play. They also have their own ideas of what the total composition should look like and how it should be performed and interpreted.

We need to move beyond spheres and networks, boxes and arrows, trees and branches (a common image for hierarchical organizational charts). These images have their uses, but they are limited. They will not help us get the timing right. Instead, I suggest that you imagine the world and the process of globalization in terms of a tall polyphonic musical score in which a large number of processes and events are playing at the same time.

In the musical score shown in Figure C.1, I have placed the beginning section of the national anthems of a small number of countries transposed so that they are in the same key as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” namely, D major. Borrowing from Dvořák, I call the resulting score The New 21st Century World Symphony.

If you play the national anthems of the United States, Canada, and Mexico at the same time and at the same volume, the U.S. anthem becomes clearly dominant toward the end. Play the French and German anthems together, and the result, to my ear at least, is simply noise. I have not tried other combinations, but when you play all the anthems together, to my surprise—and I take it as a hopeful sign—the result doesn't sound all that bad. It's not something I would want to listen to every day, but it is music, not just chaos or noise. At the very end, the composition sounds off-key for a moment, not quite right. But that's a relatively short interval.

I think there are a number of lessons we can learn from this musical score that are relevant to conducting a timing analysis in any situation.

Figure C.1 The New 21st Century World Symphony

I included only nine out of approximately two hundred countries in the world, and only the first few measures of each country's national anthem. The image we hold of the world, and of the environment in which we act, will be very restricted unless we make efforts to enlarge it.

Mozart, as an example, could keep the whole in mind.

Because none of us are Mozart, we need to sketch score diagrams that are both tall and wide enough to allow us to see what we need to see.

Actors (players) may change. The USSR no longer exists. I have included Russia to remind us of that fact. This score reminds us to keep track of new actors as well as the demise of old ones (for example, Lehman Brothers) and the conditions that will create or destroy them.

All the anthems were transposed into D major, the key in which the U.S. anthem is played. The key of a piece determines the goal and the field of forces acting on actions (each note and chord) that will move it in a specified direction (the tonic). Each key contains only a subset of possible notes (actions). The idea of a key reminds us that there will always be a contest among actors to determine what should be given priority—for example, short-term profits, long-term competitive advantage, defending an existing market niche, diversifying, and so on.

We sometimes say that the world has become multipolar. The difficulty with this description is that it has little organizing power; all we see are multiple centers competing for influence in a myriad of ways. That is why the musical score is useful as a way to make sense of what is going on. It reminds us to consider vertical relationships, how one course of action may influence, join, control, or compete with another. The score also calls our attention to the distinction between foreground and background, between melody and its accompaniment. What is background today may be foreground tomorrow.

Because we cannot easily imagine the vertical dimension of the world—and find patterns in what is going on at the same time—we shrink the vertical until it becomes a single horizontal time line. Then, because we seek speed, we shorten the line until it becomes a point. We think about the short run: we want results now. In terms of what I have called the P4 strategy (discussed in Chapter Eight), we have moved from pattern and polyphony to a single time-extended path, and from there, to a single point. In doing so, we have collapsed the vertical and shrunk the horizontal. The result is that we are living in an architectural ruin. We need the P4 strategy and the score representation to enlarge and rebuild our image of the world, not, as I said before, to add complexity, but to restore it. And restore it we must, because to act on the basis of an incomplete image or map is to risk making a wrong turn, or worse, going over a cliff we could have seen in time.

Re-imaging the world as a polyphonic, polyrhythmic score shifts how we think about the causes and consequences of events. Most of us spend a considerable amount of time looking “down the road” to the next period of time, the one we call the future. So, naturally, when we think about the consequences of our actions, we think in terms of a line, antecedents to the left, consequences—separated by some amount of time—to the right. Similarly, when we ask about the cause of an event, we typically look back to what came before. When we say that A causes B, we are focusing on the horizontal dimension of the score. We are focused on what comes before (the cause) and what comes after (the effect). That is fine, but we should also be paying attention to what is going on vertically, to what must and must not go on at the same time. That means paying attention to chords and chord progressions. Anytime someone offers an explanation or a prediction without saying what is going on simultaneously at successive points in time, you know that he or she is likely to be wrong, or right only by accident.

It was, in fact, a lucky accident that the “music consultant” I was working with decided to play the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican anthems at the same time, as well as France at the same time as Germany. Because we did not play all possible combinations, we don't know which anthems might go together and which would not. That is true of any complex environment. Do multiple streams of action form a coherent pattern, or does their copresence simply produce chaos?

Each anthem is unique to each country. To what extent must its musical or temporal identity be maintained? The falling notes suggest erosion. The future can be built from recombinations of existing notes (actions) or perhaps from a new source, the large pile of notes at the bottom. Some actors (countries) will have claimed a position in the new world, in the treble clef or the bass clef. Others may not have planned that far ahead, or if they have, they have not made their intentions public. Still others will have already found partners and will be at work creating their own mini-compositions, as indicated by the brackets.

As a score unfolds, different actors (nations, groups, organizations, institutions, or individuals) perform, audition for, or compete for different roles—namely, those of composer, conductor, performer, audience, and critic. Who will create the new score, the new strategy or business model? Who will take time-tested products and services and bring them up-to-date in the same way that a conductor reinterprets a classic for modern ears? Who will become skilled in executing the steps needed to implement a plan, program, or process? Who will perform its steps with perfection? Who will attend to and value what is produced? Finally, who will judge and critique what has been carried out and accomplished?

One reason to think about business environments as musical scores is Jacques Attali's provocative suggestion that

He concludes, “Thus … if it is true that the political organization of the twentieth century is rooted in the political thought of the nineteenth, the latter is almost entirely present in embryonic form in the music of the eighteenth century.”⁶

If Attali's comments seem extreme or far-fetched, consider the music of Charles Ives. His fourth symphony, written between 1908 and 1916, required two conductors because the rhythm was so complex.⁷ As described by Lawrence Kramer, typical Ivesian techniques included “the superimposition (layering) of diverse musical styles and processes, the withholding of goal-directed harmonic motion, the fragmentation of material, and the drastic complication of texture.”⁸ I would suggest that here we are, a century later, right in the middle of an Ivesian score—one that needs a new generation of composers, performers, and analysts to make sense of it. Radically new music is always difficult to listen to—to say nothing of the skills needed to lead it.

Finally, the New 21st Century World score reminds us that the skills needed to address issues of timing are not ones of decisiveness, calculation, or even judgment. These are virtues, of course. But the more relevant skill is the ability to envision, find, and work with the music-like patterns that run through and define the modern business environment. If we treat time as a date on a calendar—that is, if we separate it from the actions or events that take place at those moments, which is the essence of scheduling—we will be forever mystified by when things happen. We can't solve for t unless T is part of the equation, which means that we can't decide what time (t) to act unless our description of the context of action includes all six elements of temporal architecture (T)—all of the sequences, rates, durations, beginnings, endings, etc., that describe the dynamics of the world around us. The image of a score reminds us to consider time as a pattern and a process and not simply as a line or number, to think of time as a constituent and not simply a container for our actions. And we need a reminder. In the Bhagavad Gita, the Blessed Lord said to Arjuna:

Time is intangible. We cannot see, hear, smell, touch, or taste it. We may measure it, but we are not at all certain—at least not yet—what time itself consists of. Time is hidden and mysterious, and therefore easy to overlook.

Over time, the substantive issues that business leaders will face will change. The map of world will be altered; companies, business models, nation-states will come and go. The need to make the right decisions at the right time will remain. We will always face the question of timing: is it too early for a particular action, or is it already too late? How should I proceed, quickly or slowly, and what risks will I encounter along the way? In this book, I have tried to show that there is much more that we can know about such issues than meets the eye or is found in contemporary practice. Skill in matters of timing can be acquired and can become a continuing source of knowledge and competitive advantage.

So it is now time to close the book, turn off the screen, and begin the work that needs to be done. Because, as Hillel said, if not now, WHEN?