A Day in the Life of a Senior Leader

Chapter 4. Late Again

Awkward.

Seven of us now. Sitting around the table. Five minutes since the start of the meeting. We’ve used up our chit-chat allowance and wonder if you will show.

In the scheme of things relevant to a company’s success, showing up late to a meeting is not the end of the world. When it happens a lot, when it’s always the same person, and when that person is a leader, I get a severe tic about this human. Here is my inner dialogue of increasingly frustrated and snarky thinking:

• Do you know that you are late?

• Do you understand why you are consistently late?

• Do you understand the total cost of this lateness? It’s the roomful of humans waiting for you plus the information that will need to be repeated when you arrive.

• Do you understand the subjectively immeasurable credibility hit that you take each time this happens?

With that out of my system, let’s get to the heart of my concern. If you understand the problem and further understand the cost of this behavior, why is it continually happening?

Many meetings are predictable. Look at your calendar first thing in the morning. Is this an achievable set of work? No double bookings. Good. Do you see where you are likely going to be time-constrained? You’ve got a meeting you must attend that always runs long—OK, move the meeting after it. You’ve got one meeting on the opposite side of the campus? OK, build in travel time and adjust the calendar as necessary.

Some meetings are not predictable. The day has started, ...