Set by someone with a summer

The regional target arrives in a spreadsheet from a head office where July is the best month of the year.

It is a fair number. Whoever built it took last year, added growth, and split it into four quarters that look alike. Then, because the board reviews monthly, the quarters were split into twelve months, with a lift for the fourth, and the file was sent to the region.

The person who built it has a summer. Their July is long evenings, full terraces and a city that stays. Their third quarter has three working months in it.

The Gulf team receives a curve with no dead season in it.

Then July arrives and the city empties. The families have left, the decision-makers in every client business are somewhere with a breeze, and on the last day of the month the team is reviewed against a number that assumed a July that does not happen here. August is the same. By September the team is two months behind, and the conversation is about recovery plans.

In every seat I have sat in, the annual number was usually fine. Twelve months in the Gulf sell roughly what the model said they would. The damage is done by the monthly review, because it grades a team against a calendar that belongs to another climate.

The instinct is to fight the number. That is the wrong fight, and it is lost, because the number is fair.

What is wrong is the phasing. The same annual total, laid over the region's real shape: a heavier first half, a hollow July and August, a fourth quarter that starts when the city comes back and runs hot through the promotional month. Sent back to head office in the first week, before anyone has been reviewed against the flat version.

The fix is a phasing, not a fight.