six

Polyphony

We can no longer depend on a story-line unfolding sequentially, an ever accumulated history marching straight forward … for too much is happening against the grain of time, too much is continually traversing the story-line laterally.

—John Berger¹

Polyphony in music is a form of composition in which multiple melodies are performed at the same time, each retaining its own individuality as it harmonizes with others. In the previous five chapters, we looked at a single time-extended pattern laid out horizontally, like a single melody, including its sequence, its rate of development or change, its overall shape, its starting and ending points, and so on. With the element of polyphony we add the vertical dimension. For most executives, there is always a lot going on at the same time, and to get the timing right, the task is to figure out how these multiple streams of actions and events interact with each another.

Because we are coming to the end of the set of lenses needed to conduct a timing analysis, I will also include in this chapter some simple examples of what a beginning timing analysis looks like in order to set the foundation for Chapters Seven and Eight. But first, we will examine two types of relationships that are present when actions and events go on at the same time. The first is structural: the extent to which one parallel event is aligned or overlaps with another. The second is one of influence: the extent to which one event or process masks, competes with, substitutes for, or amplifies another that is going on at the same time. Previously, I called our inability to find patterns when multiple actions overlap Copland's Constraint. The classical composer pointed out that when we listen to music, we can't easily follow more than four melodies at once. Here is Copland's description of polyphony and the difficulty it poses:

One of the greatest challenges of timing is finding patterns when multiple streams of actions are going on at the same time. Although it is not a task that we are used to, it is, I would suggest, the task we now face in the twenty-first century. General Rupert Smith describes this new reality as it applies to modern warfare:

Unfortunately, we are ill-prepared for such a world. When we speak or write, we must place one word after the next. When we describe a particular situation, there are only a limited number of times we can use the word “meanwhile” before eyes begin to roll. When we reason, we demand that our conclusions follow logically from what came before it. In short, we are serial creatures in a massively parallel world. As a result, we are continually “blindsided” by events that seem to come, to use a baseball analogy, “out of left field.” But a large part of the problem is that we have gotten the location of left field wrong. It is not left, but up. Many things are happening at the same time, and we can't keep track of them.

TRACKING POLYPHONY

In order to find all the parallel processes that have implications for timing, it is useful to break down any event or situation into what I call tracks and then examine each one. Let me give you an example. On the op-ed page of the New York Times in 1996, a woman told the story of her attempt to get divorced. The title of the piece was “34 Months and Still No Divorce.”⁴ What took so long?

Over the course of the legal proceeding, a number of things happened at or around the same time, including the following: “Three matrimonial judges were sent to other parts of the State Supreme Court system and replaced by three judges with no divorce-law experience.” Her husband didn't show up for the trial, and it had to be rescheduled. The trial had to be rescheduled a second time because her husband's lawyers were preparing an appeal in another case. One lawyer had medical problems. Then the judge found himself in the midst of another trial, so he rescheduled the trial yet again. Finally, the woman was informed that the clerk's office at the State Supreme Court had misplaced all the files from her case.⁵

Presumably, this woman is now happily divorced, but the process took much longer than she anticipated. One approach for determining why this process was so lengthy is to think about all the parallel events and processes that were going on at the same time like multiple melodies being performed simultaneously by different instruments in a musical score.

Musical scores (you may want to look back at the Beethoven score I reproduced in the Introduction) have both a horizontal and vertical dimension. In this example, the horizontal dimension of the score describes the sequential nature of the legal system: hiring an attorney, filing for legal separation, meeting with the judge, and so on. In a divorce proceeding, certain steps have to be taken in a particular order. If the woman in this example had read the previous chapters, she would know that whenever events must happen in a particular order—that is, when a sequence has strict serial constraints—things can take much longer than expected. She would also know that whenever there is an acute need for closure—which is what a divorce is—any delay, particularly one that occurs at the end, can be particularly painful.

The situation the woman faced also had a vertical dimension: there were many things going on at the same time. In fact, the vertical dimension consisted of eleven different parallel tracks, one for each of the following actors or processes:

1. The husband
2. The wife
3. The wife's lawyer
4. Husband's lawyer 1
5. Husband's lawyer 2
6. Other cases for lawyer 1
7. Other cases for lawyer 2
8. Judge 1
9. Judge 2
10. Other cases for Judge 1
11. Other cases for Judge 2

If we want to add more detail, we could include additional lines for the other cases the lawyers and judges were involved in (items 10 and 11). I refer to the number of tracks in a score as its C value (C for Copland). In this example C = 11, which exceeds Copland's Constraint (C = 4) by quite a bit. That is not unusual; most situations are even “taller.”

A high C value would not matter except for the fact that the actions of different parties need to be coordinated. If a hearing is scheduled and the wife doesn't show up or her husband's lawyer cannot attend, the process cannot go forward. I call this a synchronous requirement—certain things need to happen at the same time in order for an event to play out on time.

The woman's divorce was delayed in this example because of three factors: (1) a high C value: there is a lot going on in parallel; (2) serial constraints: there is a limit to the extent to which the different steps to finalizing a divorce can be omitted, condensed, collapsed, or inverted; and (3) synchronous requirements: certain actions or activities must take place at the same time. The steps and stages of the process are clearly punctuated. A hearing or meeting begins on a particular day and time. A high C value, when combined with strict serial constraints and synchronous requirements, dramatically increases the possibility of delay. That doesn't mean that a delay is inevitable, only that one is likely. Perhaps no one could have predicted that a lawyer would have medical problems or that a judge would be reassigned. But we could have predicted that any process characterized by a high C value, strict serial constraints, and synchronous requirements would be subject to delays. Moreover, the longer such a process was delayed, the greater the risk that chance events would intervene that would delay the desired outcome even more.

So the lesson to draw is that we need to pay attention to the tall stack of parallel processes that are present at every moment in time. We can if we look up. I use the following poem by Rita Dove to remind me to look vertically.

Cancel the afternoon
evenings morning all
the days to come
until the fires
fall to ash
the fog clears
and we can see
where we
really
stand.⁶

But before I suggest a number of strategies that will help you look for tall polyphonic structures, let me distinguish polyphony from multitasking. The agenda items in multitasking are already defined. The problem is simply that we can't do all of them at once. The challenge of polyphony is different. The tracks of a tall polyphonic structure are neither fully visible nor easily imagined. We have to search for them and the ways they influence one another. The challenge of polyphony is not juggling the known but looking for the unknown, just as we did when we were looking for “hidden” intervals or “hidden” rates.

USING THE POLYPHONY LENS

The polyphony lens tells you where to look and what to look for, specifically:

1. Look vertically. Identify what is going on at the same time that could affect your work or business.
2. Look for structure. Note how simultaneous events, activities, and processes are aligned relative to each other. Which lead, lag, overlap, and so on?
3. Look for influence. Explore how one event affects, causes, or influences others going on at the same time.

Look Vertically: What Is Going on at the Same Time?

Take a moment to think of a situation in your work or life where timing matters. There are few general rules about how many tracks will be needed to describe it. Every situation is different. But there are some general strategies that can aid in the process. They fall into two categories. The first set deals with the visible. The second set consists of looking for “forgotten” or “hidden” tracks. I'll begin with the first category.

Consider All the Visible Moving Parts or Dimensions

Begin by identifying each business or function (such as R&D, manufacturing, and marketing) that is related to the situation in question. Then look closer and outline the individual tracks that are associated with each of these moving parts. Remember to include all dimensions: economic (tracks for the business cycle), financial (tracks for the rise and fall of markets), administrative (tracks for changes in the workforce), technical (tracks for the invention and use of technology), political (tracks that chart shifts in political ideology), legal (tracks that monitor changes in rules and regulations), and sociocultural (for example, tracks that chart the rise and fall of social movements, changes in values).

In addition, do not forget contextual factors. Include tracks for stakeholders and for the actions and reactions of different agents and actors, for example. Think of context as a set of concentric circles beginning with the individual, followed by the group, the firm or organization, the industry, and the nation. The largest context is global, what is going on internationally. Give each “ring” its own track or set of tracks.

The idea is to locate all the moving parts in the context in which you find yourself. A useful rule is to give all “nouns” their own track. Whatever might have its own developmental sequence, its own rate of change, its own rhythm or punctuation, and so on gets its own track. Each of these has the potential to affect what is going on in your own situation.

Find All the Hidden or Missing Tracks

This step is a little more complex. We tend to miss processes that will affect our work and business because many of the ways we describe our world are “flat.” To add height, we need to redescribe events. For example, consider the statement “A firm decides to manufacture and market a product.” This sentence refers to a single time line: first A, then B; first manufacture, then market.

You can describe the same series of events as a polyphonic structure by considering them in parallel. Simply give each element its own track or time line—one each for the firm, the manufacturing process, the product, and the market. Each of these four elements will change and overlap over time. Firms are bought and sold. New technologies will change how the product is manufactured. Marketing strategies will evolve, as will the market for the product.

The move from serial to parallel brings questions of time and timing to the forefront. Is this the right time for this firm to be marketing this particular product? Will its marketing strategy change quickly enough? Those questions are not brought to the surface by a sentence that simply says, “A firm decides to manufacture and market a product.” That is why redescription is useful. Because the world is complex, we simplify it; because it is moving, we stabilize it. We need to be conscious of the unconscious ways we do so (and work to overcome them), or we will miss the changes that affect our business.

Redescription is not an academic exercise. Look back at how General Rupert Smith described the changing nature of modern war. The word “crisscrossing” is the key. It is a hint that some kind of parallel structure will be needed to understand the whole. If we don't think in terms of polyphony, we will be puzzled and ultimately frustrated. Take an issue of temporal punctuation. When will a war be over? When will violence erupt again? In a serial world, such questions have answers. In the polyphonic world, those answers are much less clear-cut. Instead of a single answer, one question raises others: What do we need to do in parallel, and how will these various processes influence each other as we implement them over time?

Let's look at ways we can uncover and think about all the relevant tracks (events, situations, circumstances) that are either hidden or obscured by other tracks.

Forgotten Tracks There are several types of tracks that we tend to forget. The first two “forgotten” tracks are a result of rates of change that are either too slow or too fast to notice or anticipate.

Termite tracks. Termite tracks describe processes in which the minimum speed of the slowest process is so slow that we don't notice that anything is going on. For example, one reason people have bad backs is that we have gotten taller while tables have gotten lower. According to A. C. Mandal, chief surgeon at Denmark's Finsen Institute, the average height of men and women has increased four inches over the past fifty years, while the average height of tables has been lowered by as much as eight inches. “This inevitably leads to more constrained sitting postures [and] is probably the main reason for the growing number of back sufferers.”⁷ Termite tracks represent processes that happen slowly but can eventually undermine the structural integrity of a system. A corporate culture, for example, can change very slowly and incrementally, as individuals leave the organization and are replaced. When that culture change reaches the tipping point, it can have an impact on business. Yet we may miss the warning signs because the change has occurred so slowly, as when autopilots in an aircraft change the direction of an aircraft so slowly that the actual pilots don't realize the change has taken place.⁸

High-speed systems. In Chapter Four (Rate), I mentioned the maximum speed of the fastest process. A high-speed process may be a natural occurrence, such as a raging forest fire, or it may be chain reaction, such as a bank run fueled by panic. I also talked about the high speed of symbol systems. When symbol systems become a significant part of our reality, be prepared for speed. Capital moves around the globe in nanoseconds as a result of networks that are based on symbols—computer code and algorithms. There is much that is present in the world that we don't see because of the speed at which it is taking place. So remember to add tracks for processes that can happen “in the blink of an eye,” or, with computers, even faster.

Alternative Tracks These tracks describe actions or events that represent alternatives to what is going on in other tracks. Recall the example of the woman getting a divorce. One reason it took so long was that the lawyers involved had other cases that demanded their attention. They couldn't do A, because they had to do B. So if you want to know how long your kitchen renovation will take, ask the contractors how many other jobs they will be working on at the same time or, for that matter, how many they could be working on if the right opportunity presented itself. The answer you receive will tell you a lot about when your kitchen is likely to be completed. Suppose that a firm has a line of business in a market that is deteriorating. When should the firm close down the business and exit the market? Without identifying alternatives—for example, other more profitable business opportunities—many firms will continue to rationalize sunk costs and hope for a turnaround. The best way to make a timely exit is to have an alternative handy when you need one. And the best way to do that is to give each possible alternative to your current course of action its own track. That way, pardon the pun, you can keep track of it.

Alternative tracks should be included in a discussion of supply and demand. The standard view is that when the price of a product falls, customers will buy more of it; when prices rise, they will buy less. But that is not always the case. Sometimes when prices fall, customers feel richer and, as a result, buy something else that they previously couldn't afford rather than more of the same product. That is what economists call a Giffen good after Robert Giffen, a Victorian-era British statistician who first identified this phenomenon.⁹ So ask yourself: How might the needs of my customers change in ways that would cause them to seek a very different product or experience when the price of my product changes?

Interpretation Tracks Choosing the right time to act depends on how a situation is interpreted. When a country starts moving its bioweapons from one location to another, does that mean that it is preparing to use them? If so, is immediate action required? The best way to remember that timing depends on how events are interpreted is to give each interpretation its own track.

In 1993, police at the University of Pennsylvania acted to prevent black students from seizing copies of the student newspaper during a protest against a conservative columnist. A subsequent report of the incident said that the “officers should have recognized that the students' attempt to remove all the papers, although it violated university policy, was ‘a form of protest and not an indication of criminal behavior.’”¹⁰ If the students were engaged in criminal behavior, then the police acted in a timely manner. But if students were engaged in lawful protest, then the police probably acted too quickly. If the police were guilty of a timing error, it had to do with their interpretation of events.

If this story had only one possible interpretation, then the events it comprises could be placed, one after the other, on a single track or time line. But if different interpretations are possible, you need multiple tracks—one for each different “reading” of what might be going on. Ask yourself three questions: (1) When will I know which track or interpretation is correct? (2) What might be going on at that time that would influence my judgment? And (3) Given what I think is the right interpretation, when should I act?

Reaction Tracks When a change—a new organizational policy, for example—is proposed or introduced, expect a reaction: perhaps support, perhaps opposition. As Newton would say, for every action, there will be an equal reaction. There are four timing questions to ask about reactions. They involve issues of temporal punctuation, shape, and rate:

1. When will the reaction or opponent process start?
2. How quickly will it develop?
3. When will it reach significant size?
4. When will it be over?

In short, what is the overall shape of the curve that describes how the reaction begins, develops, and finally runs its course?

The best way to keep track of a possible reaction is to give the reaction its own track. That way you can consider its shape and timing from the very beginning. If you put actions and reactions on the same track, the tendency will be to think of a possible reaction as a future event, which can put it out of sight and hence out of mind.

Goal Tracks Individuals and organizations often have multiple goals or objectives: ensuring profit; enhancing their reputation; creating wealth for the next generation, in the case of a family business; and so on. Sometimes these goals are aligned, sometimes not. And over time some goals may change; one goal may replace another. Recall the dollar auction I talked about in Chapter Four (Temporal Punctuation). For many individuals, the motive to maximize gain was ultimately replaced by the motive to avoid loss, because, as you recall, the runner-up had to pay what he last bid. If you don't include separate tracks for different goals and objectives, you may be too slow to realize that they should change.

Qualitative Tracks Include tracks that describe events, processes, or activities that are important, but difficult to quantify. The breakup of the Soviet Union serves as a cautionary tale about what happens when we fail to take into account what is not easily counted, namely, “the passions—the appeal of ethnic loyalty and nationalism, the demands for freedom of religious practice and cultural expression, and the feeling that the regime had simply lost its moral legitimacy.”¹¹ Because many experts on the Soviet Union didn't consider these factors, instead relying on what they could more precisely model—that is, economic and military factors—they missed when and how quickly the breakup would occur. Regardless of the business you are in, remember to consider qualitative tracks. What cannot be quantified will often be dismissed as soft or subjective, especially in organizations that prize precision and insist that all decisions be based on “the numbers.” But, as in the case of the breakup of the Soviet Union, that attitude can lead to timing mistakes and missed opportunities.

Once you have identified the visible and hidden events and situations (tracks) relative to your environment, you can start to examine them in a deeper way in terms of how they affect and intersect each other.

Include a Sufficient Number of Tracks

Now that we have looked at ways to find tracks that are hidden or that we are likely to miss, it's appropriate to ask, How many are enough? This is like asking about a skyscraper, How tall is tall enough? The answer depends on the purpose of the building. Was the skyscraper built as a symbol: the centerpiece of a city skyline? Was it built to prove a point: to break the record for the tallest building? Was it constructed to stimulate commerce: to create a new space to attract businesses? The height of a building depends on its purpose. The same is true when we use the polyphony lens to make timing decisions. I can't say how many tracks you will want to include and analyze. But my experience tells me that you will need a C value greater than 20 to make a well-informed decision.

As part of a corporate strategy session, I worked with the head of IT in an insurance company to consider certain business scenarios. We were writing tracks on his whiteboard. Once we had about twenty tracks, he stood back and discovered that the decision about when to upgrade the company's computer system would affect the entire strategic direction of the firm. The polyphony lens helped him see beyond his own silo. I had a similar experience working with a financial firm. The members of the firm were concerned about matching their competitor's pricing. We began to describe the industry the firm was in, adding more and more tracks to capture its complexity. At around twenty, we discovered that changes in the industry would likely make the issue of price competition moot. Price would no longer be the primary factor driving profitability.

So how many tracks do you need? One maxim is what I call the second dozen rule. It has been my experience that the first dozen tracks simply display in visual form what you already know. It's the second dozen that allow you to see your situation in a new light.

Look for Structure: How Are Events, Activities, and Processes Aligned Relative to Each Other?

The polyphony lens directs our attention to how concurrent processes and events are aligned with each other: which occur at the same time and which will be separated in time. Either condition (overlap or nonoverlap) can be a source of business risks or opportunities.

Synchronous Risk—the Risk of Overlap

A dozen years ago, NBC discovered, much to its embarrassment, that viewers didn't watch the 2000 Australian Olympics in the numbers that it—and its advertisers—was counting on. Part of the problem stemmed from the date of the games, which started later than normal because Australia, the host country, was in the southern hemisphere and the seasons are reversed. According to the Wall Street Journal, the executives at NBC and elsewhere blamed poor ratings on competition, including the pennant race in baseball as well as NFL football games. They also acknowledged that the time difference between Australia and the United States was a factor.¹² Some even went so far as to wonder if Americans had lost interest altogether in the Olympic Games.

Eight years later, however, the Olympics in Beijing proved that the event could still draw a huge viewing audience. In fact, media outlets reported unprecedented interest in the games and the largest television audience in Olympic history. In 2012, the London Olympics were a huge success. “The Games averaged more than 30 million viewers a night, and well more than 200 million individual viewers in all.”¹³ So where did NBC go wrong in 2000? At least part of the answer is that NBC didn't understand the implications of all the overlapping events and circumstances that would be present, specifically:

• Weather. The Olympics were scheduled in the fall, as opposed to earlier in the summer, in an attempt to avoid the Australian winter.
• The political calendar. There was a presidential election going on in the fall that competed for media attention and viewers.
• The ebb and flow of patriotism. The end of the Cold War, years before, eliminated a clear rivalry, making the games less symbolically important. The Olympics was now more a contest between athletes, and less a contest between nations or ideologies (an example of termite tracks).
• Technology. The rise of the Internet, which makes information available on a real-time basis, made the time delay in broadcasting the events a difficult challenge.
• Competition. The Olympics competed with the baseball and football seasons (an alternative track to what was going on).

Using the polyphony lens, you can better see what overlapping conditions are at play and how to respond to them. If NBC had anticipated the issues created by so many concurrent events—and it could have—it might have found ways to benefit from the time delay. For example, it could have used detailed close-ups and slow-motion replays to show exactly how an athlete won the gold. Or it could have inserted real-time “Olympic update” advertising during pennant games, to remind viewers of the Olympics. The key point is that using the polyphony lens could have revealed in advance the challenges NBC faced.

Because there are always many overlapping events and conditions, synchronous risk can be found just about everywhere. For example, on August 1, 2007, a bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed, killing 14 and injuring 145. What investigators subsequently discovered was that more than half the weight on the main river span was concentrated on a narrow, 115-foot stretch of roadway that straddled the point where the collapse began. As part of a resurfacing project, fine and coarse aggregate used in paving materials had been placed directly above where the National Transportation Safety Board later found the design flaw that sent concrete and steel crashing into the Mississippi River.¹⁴

To understand what happened, let's look back in time. A bridge is built. Traffic begins to flow, heavier at rush hour, lighter at other times. After many years, the bridge needs repairs. In order to prevent the collapse, one had to anticipate how the repair of the bridge would interact with increasing rush hour traffic. Over time, vehicles became heavier. The population increased, and with it, rush-hour traffic. (These slow increases are examples of termite tracks.) As a result, the total weight on the bridge increased. That, combined with the weight of repair materials and equipment, contributed to the collapse.

Subsequent investigation also found a design flaw in one component of the bridge—it was too thin. That was certainly a factor. But the overall lesson is clear. To anticipate synchronous risk—the danger of overlapping events—consider downstream conditions that might co-occur from the beginning. One reason we don't do that, ironically, is that the usual way we think about cause and effect keeps our mind focused on what is essentially a single time line. We focus on what follows what, rather than on what is going on at the same time—which is where synchronous risks are to be found. As Ben Bernanke pointed out, the 1929 stock market crash didn't cause the Great Depression; rather, the Great Depression was caused by “a series of unrelated international financial events” that were going on at the same time.¹⁵

One obvious solution to the problem of synchronous risk is to create an asynchronous solution. This is what hedge funds do when they limit disbursement to staggered redemptions. In effect, these staggered redemptions prevent everyone from withdrawing his or her money at the same time in the event of a panic situation, allowing time for cooler heads to prevail and market conditions to change in a way that would convince people to keep their money invested.

Let me give you another example. The economist Richard Thaler proposed an asynchronous solution to the problem of inadequate saving by American workers (one still waiting to be implemented as far as I know). The plan would incentivize individuals to allocate a portion of their future salary increases toward retirement savings. They would commit to the allocation well in advance of their next salary increase, but the stepped-up contribution would not take effect until the increase hit their paycheck. By timing the contribution to coincide with the pay increase, workers are assured that their current take-home pay would not fall.¹⁶ The timing of additional income and additional savings would be synchronized. Perfect harmony.

Overlapping events and circumstances can therefore have positive results, what we might call synchronous rewards. For example, the director Peter Brook says that overlap protects him against failure: “I never experienced the end of work… I always made sure that I had another production set up before the current one was ended, to cover the danger of failure.”¹⁷

Planning to do several things at once is also efficient. Trains running to Grand Central Station, for example, update their schedule at the same time that they make adjustments for daylight saving time. Dan Brucker, a spokesman for the Metro-North Commuter Railroad Company, said the overlapping adjustments are simpler, enabling riders to acclimate to the changes in schedule.¹⁸ Careful consideration of overlapping events creates opportunities to generate positive outcomes and better manage risk.

Synchronous Requirements—When Conditions Must Be in Sync

Synchronous requirements refer to conditions that must be simultaneously present for a plan or activity to succeed. For example, a technology can be too early if the conditions needed for its success, including market readiness and infrastructure requirements, are not present and synchronized. One example that comes to mind is the pneumatic tire (a tire filled with air). Although Robert Thompson patented it in 1845, he never successfully commercialized the product. It was not until 1880 that the pneumatic tire was widely marketed by Robert Dunlap. By that time, bicycles had come on the scene, and pneumatic tires were ideal for providing a smooth ride.¹⁹ Thompson's timing was off because certain conditions were not present when he introduced his innovation.

Many situations have synchronous requirements. The best example in recent memory is the flight commanded by Capt. Sullenberger, the pilot who successfully landed in the Hudson River after a bird strike. He described his task as follows: “I needed to touch down with the nose slightly up … with the wings exactly level … at a descent rate that was survivable … just above our minimum flying speed but not below it. And I needed to make all the things happen simultaneously.”²⁰

What Sullenberger did was extraordinary. It required training, experience, and nerves of steel. But all of us perform actions that require synchrony whenever we make a decision, because for something to count as a decision, three conditions must be simultaneously present: first, we must perceive that we have a choice; second, the choice must be among alternatives that are recognizably different and that lead to different outcomes. Otherwise, we might as well flip a coin. Finally, we must experience a sense of efficacy. If we believe that forces beyond our control have already decided the outcome, then choice is only a formality. It is only when these three conditions are simultaneously present that an action becomes a decision. That is why it is sometimes unclear whether we have actually made a decision, rather than acted out of habit or in line with custom. We like to talk about decisions to dramatize the moment of making them. But, on closer examination, a true decision is not a single action, but a confluence of conditions. That is one reason the polyphonic lens is important. It is easy to forget about synchronous requirements.

Synchronous requirements are important, but in some cases there is an advantage in being out of sync. In a sense, that is what innovation is all about: being first. Offering customers something new requires being out ahead of existing products or services. Being out of sync can also be the source of scientific discovery. According to Einstein, the pace of his development as a child was out of sync with the norm—and that might have contributed to his discovery of relativity. He put it like this: “The normal adult never bothers his head about space-time problems. Everything there is to be thought about, in his opinion, has already been done in early childhood. I, on the contrary, developed so slowly that I only began to wonder about space and time when I was already grown up. In consequence, I probed deeper into the problem than an ordinary child would have done.”²¹

Look for Influence: How Does One Parallel Process Affect, Cause, or Influence Others?

After you have considered issues of alignment and overlap, the next step is to think through how the different events or processes might influence one another. Although not comprehensive, the following sections are a useful starting point for thinking about influence.

Causation or Creation

One action can cause or create another. For example, the solvency of some institutions, including banks, depends on the confidence of others. So when reality looks bleak, the leaders of financial institutions often express confidence in the future. To do otherwise would create the very conditions they seek to avoid—a panic and a further loss of confidence. However, if conditions worsen, the same leaders will be blamed for not disclosing how dire the situation was in the first place. The result is that when a crisis does emerge, it will often seem to appear “overnight” (the maximum speed of the fastest process is very fast), when, of course, the conditions that created it were long in the making. What is said or not said on one track (by one group) defines and creates the reality on another track (for another group).

Competition

It is not uncommon for individuals within a company to compete to secure resources—whether funding, technology, or manpower—for projects. Yet, when competition is extreme, it can divert attention from external opportunities. When there is turmoil inside a company, expect managers to miss or mistime market opportunities, particularly when those opportunities are unexpected or fleeting. Knowing when to act requires paying attention to one's environment, and that includes the dynamics of internal competition.

Cooperation

Different firms influence each other through cooperation in any number of ways, such as when they cooperate to establish industry standards or collaborate to fund the same lobbying effort. Internally, different functions within an organization, such as R&D and marketing, may pursue their own interests, but they must also cooperate to some degree if the overall goals of the organization are to be met.

Masking

One ongoing process can mask another. For example, Anthony Harris, director of the Criminal Justice Program at the University of Massachusetts, noted in 1997 that whereas the rate of aggravated assaults “skyrocketed by several hundred percent over the past four decades, the murder rate has remained flat, never increasing or decreasing by more than 50 percent.”²² The reason given was that “the murder rate is being artificially suppressed because thousands of potential homicide victims each year are now receiving swift medical attention and surviving. Americans, in other words, aren't any less murderous—it's just getting harder for us to kill one another.” Recent shootings with assault weapons may have tempered that view, but improved emergency care and response time save patients from becoming murder statistics. In short, the number of murder attempts may have been on the rise (track 1), but better treatment (track 2) allowed more victims to survive. The latter trend masked the former. In order to discover this fact, a single category of action, like a murder, which we assume occurs at one point in time (cat-point thinking) should be viewed as the consequence of a sequence of actions that develop on different tracks.

Amplification

When different actions or events occur at the same time, one can amplify or intensify another. For example, if everyone cuts back on spending at the same time during a recession, that collective action can make the recession worse. There are also predictable times when we can expect amplification. During elections, for example, politicians will express concern about issues, such as obscenity in the media, so as to inflame the passions of a certain segment of the electorate. When the election is over, those issues will fade away.

Cancellation

Two parallel processes may cancel each other out. Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg recalled a conversation he had with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War.²³ The question at the time was whether Washington's efforts at pacification were working. Ellsberg said that things were the same as a year ago. McNamara, for his part, pointed out that they had added a hundred thousand troops in that time and nothing had changed—meaning that the situation had in actuality gotten worse.

Imitation and Entrainment

There are many examples in which one process imitates another. One reason George Mitchell succeeded in negotiating a peace agreement in Northern Ireland in 1998, for example, may have been the precedent set by the peaceful transition away from apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s.²⁴

By entrainment, I mean a situation in which one process mirrors the rhythm of another. For example, a few years ago, the French decided to address their unemployment rate. Their solution: reduce the workweek to thirty-five hours. The strategy was simple. If companies wanted to maintain the same level of productivity with shorter hours—which they did—then they would have to hire more workers. After all, productivity equals the number of workers multiplied by the number of hours they work. Therefore, if productivity is to remain the same and if the number of hours each worker works goes down, then the company must hire more workers to make up the difference. C'est logique! (It's logical.)

But it didn't happen. When work was slow, companies gave workers time off, and when demand picked up, they asked employees to work more hours without overtime. Over the course of the year, the hours they worked averaged out to thirty-five per week, but the number varied from week to week and month to month. What the companies did was to synchronize two rhythms: the changing need for workers during the year with their ability to regulate the supply over time. The French, I should point out, finally abandoned their thirty-five-hour workweek experiment—without regret, as Edith Piaf would say.

Control

Some patterns control or govern others. Think about how much of our work and nonwork lives are controlled by the clock and calendar, for example. Control over time is one of the most powerful forms of control we have. The Nazis even had a word for it, Gleichschaltung, “the attempt to bring all of society into line, to synchronize it according to the imperatives of a totalitarian regime, to bring it into a unified time and beat.”²⁶ In addition, every bench scientist I know will complain at some point about financial and bureaucratic controls that limit his or her creativity and make discovery difficult.

Substitution

One track can substitute for another. For example, a broadly diversified company will try to focus Wall Street's attention on its one business that is succeeding when the others are losing money.

Exchange or Market

Multiple tracks can come together to form a market or network, as when individuals, groups, or firms from different tracks buy from and sell to one another as part of a supply chain.

Engagement

Companies engage with each other to varying degrees. In some cases, a company may be only vaguely aware of what another is doing. In other cases, it may decide to actively monitor the other's activities. In still other instances, it may decide to actively compete with or influence what another firm is doing.

Independence

Not everything is connected. Some activities and streams of action do not influence each other at all. They simply coexist. My favorite example comes from a prose poem by the influential Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky:

Once upon a time, a man in Weisskirchen said: “I shall never,
never do that.” At exactly the same time a woman in
Mühlhausen said: “Beef with horseradish.”²⁷

Perhaps in some quantum-mechanical way, those two actions are related. But for practical purposes, I think it is safe to assume that they are quite independent of each other.

We have been using the polyphony lens to look at the external environment. Now, take a moment to write down three or four actions or events that are part of your life and work. Ask yourself two questions: (1) What is going on at the same time? and (2) Which things are happening separately? In addition, how do these different actions or processes influence each other?

Let's suppose that firms A, B, and C are competing for the same customers. The competition is intense. But while that fight is going on, another set of actors (firms, lobbyists) are actively trying to influence proposed regulations that will affect the entire industry. Firms A, B, and C may be so focused on competing with each other that they fail to follow these developments and so are unprepared for the change that is coming.

The goal of the polyphony lens is to examine relationships (in terms of both structure and influence) among the many processes and events that are going on at the same time. We do this informally all the time. This chapter is simply an invitation to undertake this process much more systematically and completely.

POLYPHONY-RELATED RISKS

Every day, we hear about the ups and downs of the Dow, but little about the billions of transactions that take place on other largely opaque exchanges and markets. In fact, there is a lot going on that is invisible to the average investor. For example, suppose someone told you that you could buy a security in units of $25 that returned a monthly interest payment for as long as thirty years at a guaranteed rate between 3 and 8 percent, and at the end of thirty years you could get your money back. It sounds too good to be true … and it was. Yet Wells Fargo, the bank who offered it, says that it fully disclosed the risks involved to investors. The problem was that circumstances changed in ways no one anticipated. Newly passed legislation intended to reform Wall Street and protect consumers made it possible to terminate the securities on which this offering was based. The decision to do so was based on interest rates, and because few institutions were involved (the market was small), what one company decided to do affected everyone. In order to know what the real risks were, an investor would have to monitor changes in legislation, interest rates, and market size, and how all those changes taken together might be viewed by all the companies involved. No one was doing that.

Floyd Norris, who wrote about this situation in the New York Times, attributed the problem in part to the fact that Wells Fargo had a “contrary interest from its customers for the life of the security” and that it did not “clearly explain what could go wrong.”²⁸ But the problem is not just mismatched incentives or a failure of explanation. One cannot explain what has not been adequately described. What is needed is a category called Polyphonic Risks, which describes the risks that arise when multiple actors each pursue their own self-interested course of action at the same time. Only that kind of polyphonic analysis will allow investors to assess the real risk of their investments.

Although we can't monitor every situation, event, competitor, or process, we can train ourselves to broaden our peripheral vision to include the effects of multiple streams of action as they interact and influence each other over time. When someone suggests that you, as an individual or institution, sponsor a project of some kind or make an investment, the question to ask is how many events, actions, or activities will be going on at the same time and how their interrelationship might affect the outcome you desire.

Even in physical structures, such as bridges, synchronicity has an impact. According to engineer and author Henry Petroski, people do not usually walk in lockstep, but if the bridge on which they are walking begins to sway, they tend to synchronize their steps in an attempt to keep their balance. The result is a positive feedback loop, which makes the bridge sway even more.²⁹

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman believes that going forward we will encounter more instances of synchronous risk on a global scale, and he points to conflicts in the Arab world and Europe in 2012 as evidence. In the Middle East, he said, “this hyperconnectivity simultaneously left youths better able to see how far behind they were—with all the anxiety that induced—and enabled them to communicate and collaborate to do something about it.” In the European Union, hyperconnectedness revealed “just how uncompetitive some of their economies were, but also how interdependent they have become. It was a deadly combination.”³⁰ In both cases, the synchronous risk was a result of globalization and information technology moving the world from being connected to hyperconnected.

The question to ask in business is whether the same conditions of connectivity and interdependence will cause a spike in inflation if the world economies begin to recover at the same time. And with respect to timing, how much advance warning will we have relative to the lead time we need to manage this risk?

When we don't consider polyphony, we can draw the wrong conclusions. For example, the cash rebate website Extrabux did an analysis in 2012 to determine the best time for students to buy and sell their textbooks online. It found that August 20–26 and January 7–13, the beginning and end of the fall semester, were the best windows of opportunity. That's common sense. But what was interesting is what Extrabux discovered about the relationship between supply and demand. It found that prices online sometimes decrease as demand for the products increases.³¹ Most of us believe that it should work the other way around: when demand is high, prices should rise, not fall.

We need to take a closer look to see why this phenomenon occurs and how it relates to polyphony. To do that we need to consider the actions of both buyers and sellers as they interact with each other over time. As the beginning of the semester approaches, students realize that there will be no market for their used books once classes are fully under way and that the professor might not assign the same book the following year. Sellers of a product nearing its expiration date will become increasingly desperate, especially if they need the money to buy their own books for the new semester. That's why, although there are more buyers, prices will be lower. Sellers must sell a product that has a short shelf life, and buyers arrive in large numbers to take advantage of the situation. It's all in the timing. In order to predict this effect, we need to imagine a polyphonic structure that describes multiple actors each pursuing a similar or different course of action at the same time.

POLYPHONY OPTIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES

In the same way that multiple overlapping events and actions pose risks, they can also create opportunities to innovate. Using the polyphony lens to improve timing can take a number of forms.

Adjust the Height

Any one of us can choose to do more (or fewer) things at the same time. Multitasking has personal costs as well as benefits. But at the organizational level, there are larger issues at stake. Acquisitions and divestments, which increase or decrease the number of activities a company needs to manage simultaneously, are height adjustments, as are decisions about outsourcing or global staffing, which change the number, kind, and timing of actions that must be managed simultaneously. Depending on the goals of a company, and its structure, choices need to be made between breadth and depth, expansion and focus. Subtracting height—engaging in fewer activities, which means fewer tracks—is as valid an option as adding more tracks to manage.

Modify the Structure

Considering different patterns of alignment and overlap (in roles and structure) may open the door to new opportunities. Entire industries have been created or contracted as a result of the Internet, for example, which eliminates the need for some of the traditional retailing features of business and brings customers closer to product creation.

Anytime one can work in parallel, rather than simply in sequence, there is an opportunity to save time and perhaps money. An example from the construction industry is what is called a design-build process. A design-build contractor is responsible for both the design and construction of the project, with the two phases overlapping. The overlap often reduces the time it takes to complete the project and saves money.

In medicine, bringing processes back in sync has led to innovative therapies. For example, even after a limb has been amputated, some individuals continue to be plagued by residual pain. Dr. Vilayanus S. Ramachandran, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California at San Diego, devised a simple method for eliminating the phantom pain.³² He created a box with an angled mirror. When the patient places his hand in the box, he sees two arms, one the mirror image of the other. The patient is instructed to move his arm as if he were conducting an orchestra. His eyes see two arms moving, but he receives feedback only from the one. The brain becomes confused and simply shuts down the circuits that were involved, which removes the feeling of pain.

Boeing identified a business opportunity after falling out of sync with suppliers. In 1997, aircraft production had to be shut down for a month because parts weren't available following a flood of orders. This led to a year-end loss and $2.6 billion in charges against earnings over two years.³³ Following that painful experience, Boeing decided to manage the problem by giving customers options. Customers could place a firm order, entitling them to a set delivery date, but giving them the ability to cancel or postpone within a year or so of delivery. Alternately, customers could choose what Boeing called a “purchase right,” which guaranteed a price but no fixed delivery date.³⁴ A team at Boeing keeps a close watch on these different categories of customers and their shifting needs so that it can “award delivery slots to important or inpatient clients in the event that certain customers get in trouble and don't want the planes they had sought.” In effect, Boeing implemented a polyphonic multilevel design by monitoring what was happening to different categories of customers over time as the environment changed.

Use Influence

Some polyphonic options involve how one process influences another. Think about the amount of capital that banks must keep in reserve. Too much will hamper the legitimate activities of the bank: it won't be able to lend, which will harm the economy; but too little will leave the bank vulnerable in a time of crisis. Charles Goodhart, a professor at the London School of Economics, proposed a solution to this problem that involved polyphony.³⁵ He suggested that regulators should track the pace of loan growth and the rate of increase in asset prices. When these move sharply above trend, banks need to find more capital. In effect, Goodhart argued that the way to manage and regulate a dynamic system was to monitor critical variables as they change in relationship with each other over time. One variable would influence another.

You can utilize information about how one process can influence another in any number of ways. For example, a study led by Dr. William Keatinge of Queen Mary and Westfield College in London compared health and climate records in Europe and discovered a relationship between changes in temperature and the incidence of coronary thrombosis and strokes. Coronary thrombosis cases peaked two days after drop in temperature; strokes peaked five days after a drop. According to the Economist, the data were used to create “a computer model that combined meteorological, demographic and medical data to predict demand for medical services. A four-week trial … resulted in operating savings of £400,000.”³⁶

As you think about polyphonic risks and opportunities, remember that the trick is to suspend your usual classification system, which can be overly narrow. The issue before you may appear to be predominately one of finance, manufacturing, marketing, sales, global strategy, or, for that matter, climate change. But framing an issue exclusively in terms of any one of these categories can lead you to ignore its wider context. What matters, when it comes to timing, is finding and examining multiple, ongoing streams of action and events. That is what the polyphony lens is designed to do. The goal is to expand your peripheral vision, which is where unnoticed risks and opportunities are to be found.

THE TEMPORAL IMAGINATION

One of the most frustrating conditions is waiting. You have arrived at a destination, but another person, or something you want, need, or depend on, has not. You have to wait, and if you are in a hurry, the time you spend waiting can be painful. That was the case at the airport in Houston. Passengers quickly arrived at the baggage claim, but their luggage did not. A classic polyphony problem: you exit the plane and proceed to the baggage claim. Your baggage is unloaded and transported to the baggage claim. Which will get there first, you or your luggage, and by how much? In Houston, passengers got there first, and they complained about how long it took for their luggage to arrive, which was seven minutes on average.

The obvious solution was to get the luggage to the baggage area faster. I can imagine a small army of time-and-motion experts armed with clipboards and stopwatches, à la nineteenth-century efficiency expert Fredrick Taylor, monitoring and measuring every movement that was involved, perhaps even studying how baggage was loaded into the plane in the first place. But that was not the solution the airport implemented. Asynchronous risks, the risk that something will happen before or after something else, demand synchronous solutions. So what the airport did was to move “the arrival gates away from the main terminal and [route] bags to the outermost carousel. Passengers now had to walk six times longer to get their bags. Complains dropped to near zero.”³⁷ It's not how long it takes to get your bags but synchronous arrival, seeing your bag come down the conveyer belt just as you arrive at the carousel, that makes for a happy passenger. The Houston solution took imagination and an understanding of polyphony, and it probably cost next to nothing.