The “Coming Soon” Economy: Does Indonesia Love Announcements More Than Outcomes?
Indonesia has vision, talent, and intent. But when declarations become the end goal, trust erodes and unfinished plans pile up.
Indonesia is a land of big ideas and even bigger ambitions. We are a nation of dreamers, planners, architects of potential futures. But lately, we’ve also become something else: announcers.
We announce with energy. We pitch with confidence. From futuristic capital cities and electric vehicle corridors to digital wallets and cultural revolutions, no concept is too early to declare. A whisper of a pilot program becomes an “official launch.” A single stakeholder meeting gets a commemorative photo and a caption about synergy. The press release, somehow, always arrives first.
Let’s be generous. This isn’t born from deception. It’s optimism. It’s the belief that intention is the first step to transformation, and maybe if we say something out loud with enough conviction, it’ll start to happen.
But somewhere along the way, the announcement became the destination, not the starting point. The performance of progress overtook the progress itself. It’s not an outright failure. It’s a national habit. And like all habits, it deserves a second look.
So this is less a critique and more an invitation. Let’s laugh a little, think a bit deeper, and ask whether we’ve started mistaking the trailer for the film.
The Announcement Economy: Where Potential Is the Product
We’ve entered a moment in time where the plan is often treated as the deliverable. A sharp keynote, a polished slide deck, and a well-lit photo op are now considered viable milestones in and of themselves. In many walks of life, just saying something is going to happen is sometimes treated as if it already has. It’s not entirely illogical. People respond to vision. Momentum loves a story. And stories are much easier to ship than systems.
You’ve heard the familiar hits: the transport corridor that’s just “months from completion” but still awaiting a land permit. The renewable energy breakthrough “currently in advanced talks.” The cross-sector partnership “under strategic alignment.” These are not lies. They are truths-in-progress, aspirational statements treated as soft launches.
And to be fair, progress often starts with articulation. Without declarations, ambition can stay stuck in notebooks and WhatsApp chats. But when those declarations become the end goal, not the entry point, the ecosystem starts to warp. Visibility becomes currency. Announcements become KPIs. People begin chasing headlines instead of timelines.
We start to build trust not on delivery, but on anticipation. And the problem with anticipation is that eventually, it expires. If too many promises go unfulfilled, audiences stop clapping.
This isn’t about abandoning optimism. It’s about grounding it. Ideas need space to grow, yes. But they also need time to mature, and most importantly, a clear path to reality.
Conference Rooms, Stages, and Selfies: The Culture of Visibility
In today’s Indonesia, the optics of progress often travel faster than progress itself. A post, a panel, a well-lit group selfie. These are the new deliverables in a professional landscape where perception frequently outpaces substance. To be seen doing something is increasingly treated as evidence that it’s being done. It’s not always wrong, but it’s not always right either.
We’ve all played along:
That LinkedIn post from a panel discussion with a caption like “Big things brewing” without any details.
The photo with a policymaker or investor, artfully cropped to suggest proximity and relevance.
The vague announcement of an “upcoming initiative” that’s still three stakeholder meetings away from even existing.
This isn’t deceit. It’s strategy. Visibility, after all, opens doors. In a competitive and relational culture, presence matters. But somewhere along the line, being seen started to carry more weight than building quietly. The assumption became: if you're visible, you must be doing something important. And if you're not, maybe you're irrelevant.
This shift isn’t limited to government affairs or corporate life. It has filtered into startups, creative industries, civil society spaces. Everywhere, there is an underlying pressure to perform momentum. To appear in motion, even if the engine hasn’t started.
What gets lost is the quiet labour behind the scenes: the iterations, the late nights, the false starts. The things that don’t photograph well. The work that isn’t tweetable. And yet, that’s often where the value is.
So maybe the question worth asking is this: what would it look like if credibility came not from who you were next to, but what you brought into the world? Could we make room for the unpolished middle? The uncomfortable, unbroadcasted work of actually building something that lasts.
Trickledown Hype: From Policy Rooms to Personal Brands
The culture of premature announcements doesn’t just live in press briefings or on ministry stages. It seeps, quietly and consistently, into everyday professional life. Not out of bad intentions, but because it has become the norm. When those at the top model a style of leadership that prizes visibility over validation, the rest of the ecosystem adjusts accordingly.
So we start to see it everywhere:
Entrepreneurs posting logos before they’ve written a line of code.
Creatives announcing collaborations when nothing’s been agreed beyond “we should do something together.”
Early-career professionals publicly launching initiatives still trapped in group chat purgatory.
It’s not deceitful. It’s often deeply sincere. People want to show they’re working, building, progressing. And in a hyper-online world, silence is often mistaken for inaction.
This is what we might call aspirational signaling. It’s the public face of hope. But when everyone is projecting possibility, it becomes harder to distinguish what’s emerging from what’s imagined. That gap creates real tension. When everything is always “coming soon,” audiences become skeptical, collaborators cautious, and genuine builders discouraged.
It’s not ambition that’s the issue. Ambition is vital. The problem is pace. When the announcement arrives before the foundation is stable, it creates expectations the reality can’t yet support. That pressure can lead to shortcuts, burnout, and disappointment for those watching and for those building.
What we need isn’t less dreaming. We need more patience with the process behind the dream. A little more trust in quiet work. A little more celebration of things that are complete, not just contemplated. In other words, less urgency to appear busy, and more time to be busy, doing the actual work that turns promises into something people can use, join, or believe in.
Why It Matters: The Cost of a Culture in Preview Mode
Living in a state of constant preview might feel productive. It keeps the energy high, the timelines short, and the feed full. But over time, a culture built on anticipation rather than completion begins to show cracks.
Trust doesn’t collapse all at once. It wears thin slowly, almost imperceptibly. People stop believing, not because they’re lied to, but because too many promises are left hanging. Announcements without follow-through make every future announcement feel lighter, less credible, more like theater than truth.
Inside teams, the pressure to be seen often overtakes the need to be effective. The goal becomes crafting an update, not solving a problem. Shallow wins are rewarded. Real problems, which take time and don't look good in photos, are pushed aside. Burnout creeps in. And it's not from overwork, but from working in ways that feel performative.
For young professionals, it can be even more disorienting. When hype is rewarded louder than hard work, they’re left wondering if sincerity is a weakness. If they play the quiet long game, will anyone even notice?
And perhaps most worrying of all, we risk forgetting how to finish things. Delivering becomes foreign. Execution becomes a lost art. We celebrate intentions, not results. That’s a difficult loop to break once it becomes normal.
This is a reminder that what comes after the announcement matters more than the announcement itself, not a call to stop dreaming. We can still be bold, still aim high, still speak with conviction. But we also need to build with care. Reward what gets done. Respect the process. Make space for the quiet, repetitive, unglamorous parts.
Because inspiration fades. What remains (and what matters) is what we bring into the world after the cameras are off.
The truth is, Indonesia isn’t short on vision. We don’t suffer from a lack of creativity, ambition, or intent. The energy is there. The ideas are often brilliant. The talent is real. But somewhere along the way, we’ve started mistaking the announcement for the achievement. We confuse momentum with movement. A teaser becomes a trophy.
This isn’t a failure of character. It’s a habit. One born from good intentions, optimism, and the natural desire to be seen doing something meaningful. But the habit needs adjusting. Because the work that matters most often happens when no one is watching. And when we stay too long in preview mode, we start forgetting how to cross the finish line.
The invitation here isn’t to quiet ambition. It’s to ground it. To put more weight behind the things we finish than the things we plan. The campaign that actually launched. The tool that’s finally usable. The community initiative that made it to year two.
“Coming soon” is useful. It generates buzz. But “now open” changes lives. That’s where trust is built. That’s where real momentum begins. The applause is fine, but the impact is better. Let's lean into that.
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