Better Late or Not?

A friend and I were reminiscing about a past job.

He remembered how “the important people were always late.”

I remembered that we always had a difficult time executing anything.

I wonder if there was a connection.

Comments

[ann michael]

Hi Ellen!

Actually, there is a lot going on here.

Lateness, whether intentional or not, communicates priorities to others. If I can get out of bed at 4:00am to catch an early plane, why am I often 5 or 10 minutes late to a meeting?

Sometimes it’s because of optimism. I start something believing it can be accomplished AND still allow me to be on time, and I’m wrong!

But then why don’t I start something that causes me to be late for the plane? It’s because I know there is no margin for error. I make it a priority to be there on time.

I can’t speak for other corporate cultures, but in the instance to which I was referring, the culture was one of fire-fighting and interruption. It was modeled by the “important people” (those at a certain level in the corporate hierarchy) – causing them to be pulled in various directions at a moment’s notice - and it manifested itself at almost every level in the organization.

What was never stressed was balance between legitimate immediate needs or information that should cause a change in direction and a knee-jerk approach to every ripple in the pond.

Everyone was late, decisions were either made very abruptly (to react to a fire) or very slowly (to try and get everyone involved to avoid making a mistake), and many things never got finished!

I'm very curious about people's thoughts on this (because I'm really still trying to diagnose the issue for my own benefit and hopefully the benefit of others).

Ann

[Ellen Weber]

Wow -- Thanks Ann, what an interesting connection I see here. So called important people to one person - might actually be arrogant slackers to another:-) It takes an agenda and advanced organizers to execute action plans. When I chair meetings I depend more on that - than on "important" people who come in late:-) Plans get executed in amazing ways:-)when ordinary people pull together. Thoughts?