Over the years, I have made connections, friendships and alliances with people from all walks of life and in many different situations and I value all these relationships as part of my ongoing business development. One person who I met recently, Mike Bird, has kindly participated in a podcast and also provided a testimonial for our company formation service. He also writes the excellent “Bloomstorm Briefing” as part of his site www.bloomstorm.com. In his most recent issue, he writes an article about “living with change” making particular reference to the subject of timekeeping.
As my wife will testify, if there is one thing I can’t stand it is bad time-keeping. Mike’s solution, in an internal situation, is very interesting. He writes ….in many companies we reward late arrivals by stopping and recapping what they have missed. This is the kiss of death for good time-keeping….. Ignore anyone who comes in late – don’t recap, don’t offer them a seat, don’t acknowledge their late arrival at all: in short don’t reward them. People soon learn that punctuality matters.
I feel strongly that you should treat every meeting, whoever it is with, as if you were meeting with your most important client. Sure, we are all under time pressure, but attending late for a meeting is not only insulting to all others present, but also gives off messages about the way you run your business affairs. If time is short, there is nothing wrong at the beginning of a meeting, in making it clear to all the attendees that you can only spare a certain specified amount of time. But just don’t turn up late.
I have always been very punctual and make it a point to try and be early for meetings. I am not without experiences of bad timekeeping where despite all my attempts; I have been caught out by transport problems etc.
I have also had the odd situation where I have kept people waiting and suffered the consequences. On one occasion, many years ago, I kept some prospective new clients waiting in our reception whilst I was on a telephone call. When the meeting started some 15 minutes late they were decidedly frosty and what could have been a very good client, didn’t come through. I found out later it was because I had kept them waiting. I didn’t blame them at the time and I still don’t.
Business is hard enough at the best of times and with the current economic climate, is destined to be even harder. Attending meetings late, be it internal, or with suppliers or customers gives off a bad vibe.
So if you are meeting with me, please be on time.