The traffic gods were with me and I arrived 10 minutes early to a reception. I walked in to find 2 other participants already thereas well as the host. The wait staff was scurrying to put the food out, and the bartender was just setting up the bar.
One of the other attendees had driven 1 ½ hours to get to the reception. He said “where I come from, if you aren’t 10 minutes early, you are late.” I politely enquired where he was from. You know the answer.
You probably can also guess his generation. And, that he is a very successful entrepreneur who has sales in his background. About 40 minutes into the 2 hour reception, a couple of young successful colleagues arrived. They would no more think of arriving to a reception when it starts than being the first guests to a Sunday brunch.
What time you arrive is just a curiosity when it is an open-ended reception. Tardiness by junior team members, however, has been the subject of 3 separate one-to-one’s in the last 2 weeks. To me, that is an epidemic. The team members seem to be highly competent people whose work is otherwise quite good. They just can’t show up on time. Changing their start time seems like a perfect solution-yup, tried that. They are just as late at that time. So it is not “can’t” it is “won’t”. It is just not a priority.
So the value systems don’t match. The company values being on-time, and the team member doesn’t. It might not be the most important characteristic of great job performance, but it becomes a question of “What do you tolerate?” to one generation, And, “are you going to let this one detail run you?” to the other.
Checking around, I found one organization who has implemented a 12 point system. If you get to 12 within a year, you are gone. They have set their window of tolerance. This has relieved management of the perception of favoritism and reduced the excuse-telling. It may not be the number one attribute for job success but not paying attention to the effects on the rest of the team still has consequences.
If you have a good system to share, please let me know….lots of your compatriots would like hear.
Illustration courtesy of http://lineshapespace.com