The ways in which people in various parts of the world handle time communicate vastly different meanings. Moreover, these deeply ingrained ways of using time are often not on the conscious level, but can trigger highly charged emotional responses ranging from feelings of irreparable insult to total exasperation.
Do We Live That Much Longer?
If you have a ‘time is money’ mentality, the only thing you are going to get in our region of the hemisphere is an ulcer; the result of expectations that are incompatible with the deeply embedded cultural norms for tackling TIME in the Middle East.
One businessman invites another to lunch, promising to meet at 11:00 a.m.; at 1:30 p.m. the guest has neither seen nor heard from his host, so he lunches solo and gets back to work. At 5:00 p.m., his host arrives and cheerfully announces that he has come to take him to lunch. The guest protests that he has already had lunch; the host is puzzled, wondering what urgency could have prompted such recklessness, after all, what did his guest have to do that was so important?
A computer company contracts to deliver and install a new computer system on Friday, so their customer will not have too much down-time. The customer would have preferred a week-end installation, but the computer wizards didn’t work on weekends. As it turned out, they seemed to have problems with weekdays too as no one showed up or bothered to explain until the exasperated customer called. “Oh, we have a problem, if we solve it we’ll try to do the job before next Friday Inshallah!”
These cases demonstrate two diametrically opposed mind-sets. One with underlying Western time values and the other Middle Eastern orientated. The objective is not to ‘judge’, but see whether these differences could affect our financial prosperity.
The ways in which people in various parts of the world handle time communicate vastly different meanings. Moreover, these deeply ingrained ways of using time are often not on the conscious level, but can trigger highly charged emotional responses ranging from feelings of irreparable insult to total exasperation.
Edward T.Hall in his study on how culture communicates without words, The Silent Language, makes some profound observations. He identifies two constructs related to North American perceptions of time:
“Valuation, expressed in the attitude that time itself is valuable and should not be wasted; and
“Tangibility, expressed in the attitude that time is a commodity. It can be bought, sold, saved, spent, wasted, lost, made up and measured.” It is these constructs which predominantly drive Western cultures to plan, develop systems for saving time, forecast, set deadlines and financial targets. These are based on a linear view of time, extending from past into the future. These concepts are learned and distinctive to each culture.
What about our culture? How does it view time and how do these views affect trade relations, productivity and profitability? Do we need to make changes or allowances for business purposes?
I believe the most fundamental difference lies in our perception of ‘fate’. These deeply ingrained beliefs are verbalized in expressions of folk wisdom: il maktoub ma minoh mahroub (we cannot escape our fate); al daher doulaab, marra illak ou marra allayak, (time/luck is a wheel, once with you and once against you). The implication of these sayings is that man has no real control over the events in his life. How would planning for the future or even the concept of future make sense in such a value system? In fact, proactivity could well be viewed as challenging Fate and risking reprisals. In other words, time controls us.
To sum up, the major difference between North American and Middle Eastern TIME values is that one is an ageric culture and the other is a non-ageric culture. Edward T. Hall defines these as follows:
In AGERIC cultures people believe they have to act to get ahead or change conditions.
In NON-AGERIC cultures people believe it makes no difference whether you do something or not.
Think of the implications:
1. Time is not a commodity of value in the Middle East, since it is beyond man’s control.
2. Money and success are based more on good fortune than on human intervention.
3. Since time is not viewed as a linear continuum in the Middle East, the need to complete one task before starting another does not seem important. Hence, the presence, in certain offices, of several people at the same time, each seeking a different service from the same official.
I am not suggesting that one set of values is superior to the other, but that we need to understand the different language of time peculiar to each culture. We need to know the meaning of that language if we wish to have good relations, be perceived as efficient and reliable and competitive in a global market that has become far more sensitive to the impact of cultural differences in the success and failure of international business relations.
Hall identifies four isolates that communicate the language of time in each culture:
1. Urgency, communicated by the time and hour of day at which communication takes place.
2. Monochronism, communicated by the number of things being done at the same time.
3. Activity, communicated by how being ‘busy’ is perceived.
4. Variety, communicated by intervals of time as having short or long duration.
The way we handle these four isolates of time determine whether or not a businessman will be insulted if we keep him waiting for 10 minutes, show up one hour late or reschedule an appointment more than once. Our treatment of time will also determine how other cultures will perceive our efficiency and reliability, and their willingness to place trust in us to do business with us. The time it takes to transfer and process information, manufacture and deliver goods and services and conclude transactions will determine our competitiveness.
We need to understand and master the language of time as ‘spoken’ by different cultures, a language more eloquent than words and more fundamental in managing change than A, B, C.
Remember, we are not immortal, so Inshallah, Boukra and Maaleysh, IBM, jokingly translated into Arabic may not be our best formula for success.
