Before writing a single page of proposal on our local PPP project, we’ve had four meetings. The Mayor. The Vice Mayor. The Mayor’s son. Plus a young attorney of generous proportions who says very little, spends most of the time on his phone, yet appears to miss nothing.
Every meeting involved plenty of food, small talk, and what a Western businessman might call “no actionable outcome”.
And yet we’re further along than any cold proposal submission would have taken us.
The Western read: four meetings, no agenda, no decisions. These people aren’t serious.
He’s not wrong about what happened in the room. He’s completely wrong about what the room was for.
Those meetings were the proposal. Not the document – the relationship. We were being assessed. Can these people be trusted? Do they understand how things work around here? Will they embarrass us? Will they do what they say they’ll do?
The food isn’t incidental – it’s where the guards come down. The small talk isn’t filler – it’s data collection. The nods aren’t vague – in context, they’re a green light.
Asia runs on relationship capital. Transaction follows trust. Proposal follows access.
None of this works for the fly-in, fly-out executive who’s allocated two days and expects to leave with a signed MOU. You can’t read a room you’ve never sat in long enough to understand. You can’t schedule trust.
The next time someone tells you a meeting in Asia was a waste of time, ask what they expected it to do?
Sometimes the only outcome that matters is being worth meeting again.
PS. In case you’re wondering what I’m doing these days, please check my updated LinkedIn profile: linkedin.com/in/davidthomas-asia
