Approved at eleven

Every Ramadan I watch a decision that would take a fortnight in May get made in a single evening.

Not because anyone is trying harder. This is supposed to be the slow month. A shorter working day, an office that empties at two, a calendar with nothing in it that anybody expects to happen.

Then at eleven at night the thread moves. The country manager replies. Finance replies. The founder, who has not been reachable since the first day of the month, sends four words and a yes. By midnight it is agreed, and in the morning it is a decision with a date on it.

The reason is not urgency. It is that all of those people are awake in the same hour, fed, at home, holding a phone, with nothing scheduled against them. In an ordinary month they are never in the same hour at all. One is in a meeting, one is boarding, one has gone for the school run, one is asleep in a time zone a few hours behind the rest.

That is the tell. The organisation chart is not the approval chain. The approval chain is the overlap in the deciders' waking hours, and in most companies that overlap is a few minutes wide, somewhere late in the morning, already booked.

Nothing about the company changes in Ramadan. The overlap widens, so the chain shortens, so things get decided.

Which means the month the whole region calls unproductive is the one month of the year when the people who can say yes are available at the same time, and most companies spend it apologising for the shorter day.