A cus­tomer’s first in­ter­ac­tion with a busi­ness is a pre­view of com­ing at­trac­tions. It re­veals whether the busi­ness pays care­ful or care­less at­ten­tion to re­spect­ing the cus­tomer’s time.

Re­cent­ly, I agreed to call some­one at a busi­ness place at a par­tic­u­lar time for a meet­ing.

I called at the agreed time, on­ly to be greet­ed with a huge ex­cla­ma­tion of sur­prise, sim­ply be­cause I had called on the dot.

Punc­tu­al­i­ty is non-ne­go­tiable for me, so I get this re­ac­tion of­ten. Still, I was struck by the in­creduli­ty in the per­son’s re­sponse.

We spoke about how punc­tu­al­i­ty, keep­ing one’s word and re­spect­ing time should be nor­mal stan­dards in busi­ness.

Even in a so­ci­ety like T&T, where cit­i­zens are known for “tak­ing it easy,” these stan­dards should hold firm.

Every busi­ness has a re­la­tion­ship with time. That re­la­tion­ship is re­flect­ed in its in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions and in how it re­sponds to cus­tomers and stake­hold­ers ex­ter­nal­ly.

The in­ter­nal norm usu­al­ly dri­ves the out­ward re­sponse. The pat­terns tell a sto­ry. The re­la­tion­ship with time is ei­ther one of rev­er­ence or of scorn.

Cus­tomers can tell al­most im­me­di­ate­ly how a busi­ness re­gards time. From the car park to the se­cu­ri­ty check­point and be­yond, clues re­veal whether re­spect for time is a front and cen­tre con­sid­er­a­tion.

The same is true from the tele­phone, to the web­site, to the so­cial pages of the busi­ness.

Far too many busi­ness­es treat time with scorn. I can­not un­der­stand the love af­fair with tar­di­ness and ir­rev­er­ence for time.

It shows up in con­stant scram­bling to meet dead­lines, com­mu­ni­ca­tion mis­steps that could have been avoid­ed with time­ly re­spons­es, meet­ings that al­ways start late and fol­low-up calls that nev­er hap­pen.

One of the most lu­di­crous yet com­mon sit­u­a­tions, is when peo­ple as­sem­bled in a meet­ing wait pa­tient­ly for chron­ic late­com­ers.

Worse still, some­one calls the late­com­ers to ask why they are late, on­ly to hear, “I’m stuck in traf­fic.”

Cor­rect prac­tice would have been a cour­tesy call from the late­com­er to ad­vise of the de­lay.

This is a glar­ing ex­am­ple of poor busi­ness prac­tice, tol­er­at­ed so long that it has made it­self in­to a norm.

The re­la­tion­ship with time is set at the most se­nior lev­el of a busi­ness. If lead­ers treat time as a valu­able and fi­nite com­mod­i­ty, it be­comes the en­vi­ron­men­tal and cul­tur­al stan­dard.

Re­spect for time is a nat­ur­al pre­cur­sor to ur­gency. To­geth­er, time and ur­gency form a dy­nam­ic duo that, when in­fused in­to the op­er­at­ing fab­ric of a busi­ness, pre­vent count­less in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal com­plaints, pain points and ser­vice fail­ures.

Thank­ful­ly, some busi­ness­es are led by in­di­vid­u­als for whom tar­di­ness is non-ne­go­tiable.

In these time-sen­si­tive en­vi­ron­ments, er­rors in com­mu­ni­ca­tion, dis­joint­ed cus­tomer in­ter­ac­tions and missed fol­low-on ac­tions are the ex­cep­tion rather than the rule.

These busi­ness­es ho­n­our their con­tracts and be­come pre­dictable in their time­keep­ing. Re­spect for time be­comes a liv­ing cur­ren­cy, trad­ed for ef­fi­cien­cy, rev­enue and mem­o­rable cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ences.

When a busi­ness cu­rates its op­er­a­tions around time and ur­gency, it earns a high score on the de­cen­cy quo­tient.

This shows up in a cul­ture that val­ues re­spect, at­ten­tive­ness, ef­fi­cien­cy, cus­tomer ad­mi­ra­tion, em­ploy­ee dis­ci­pline and rep­u­ta­tion­al strength. Bu­reau­cra­cy is re­ject­ed be­cause of its time heav­i­ness and drag on ef­fi­cien­cy.

Lead­ers who re­gard re­spect for time as a busi­ness val­ue un­der­stand its link to rep­u­ta­tion­al risk or re­ward. They work tire­less­ly to en­sure that this val­ue be­comes an in­nate dis­ci­pline across the work­force and is dif­fused through­out the busi­ness. Build­ing a lega­cy around time and ur­gency be­gins when these at­trib­ut­es be­come cul­tur­al mark­ers of pro­fes­sion­al­ism.

Every busi­ness makes a state­ment on time. The sig­nal will be ei­ther rev­er­ence or scorn, de­pend­ing on whether time is squan­dered or treat­ed as a fi­nite re­source that con­tributes to shap­ing the rep­u­ta­tion­al lega­cy of the busi­ness.

What state­ment has your busi­ness been mak­ing re­gard­ing its re­la­tion­ship with time?

Rev­er­ence, I hope.