Leadership Trait to Ponder: Punctuality

July 31, 2014 by

Punctuality-Leadership-Time-Management-Todd-NielsenToday the leadership trait to ponder is Punctuality. Punctuality is important to me since a leader’s time is almost always scarce. I have sat in many conference rooms with a number of other executives waiting for the leader or some other key member to arrive in order to begin a meeting.  I estimated in one meeting that the cost of waiting amounted to be in the thousands of dollars.

I have taught my 6 year old son the phrase, “Early is on time and on time is late.” It’s a motto that we could all benefit from. The dictionary defines Punctuality as: the condition of keeping to arranged times for appointments, meetings, etc. The condition of arriving or taking place at an arranged time; promptness.

Below are some of my favorite quotes to help inspire and illustrate the importance of Punctuality. As you read these quotes, think about how you can exemplify this leadership trait in yourself.

Quotes on Punctuality

I think the only way to properly face doom is to be on time.” ~Jennifer Dubois

Punctuality is the soul of business.” ~Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no delay, no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” ~Lord Chesterfield

Punctuality is the politeness of kings.” ~Louis XVIII

Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.” ~Niccolo Machiavelli

Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” ~William Shakespeare

Promptitude is not only a duty, but is also a part of good manners; it is favorable to fortune, reputation, influence, and usefulness; a little attention and energy will form the habit, so as to make it easy and delightful.” ~Charles Simmons

People count the faults of those who keep them waiting.” ~Proverb

What do you think about when you ponder Punctuality? Do you have any other favorite quotes on the topic? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

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Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Have Time

March 4, 2013 by

Time-Management-effective-leadership-Brendan-HoweI am declaring war on the phrase “I don’t have time”. It’s a very common sentence I hear way too often from leaders, managers and employees.

If you EVER use this phrase or a variation of it, I will suggest two things about you:

  1. You are not as accountable as you should be; and,
  2. You are bad at time management.

Tough medicine? Well, let me explain why I think this way and why it is so important that leaders never to use this phrase.

Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, whether you’re Bill Gates or the garbage man. It comes down to how you use that time and being accountable for that.

Effective time management is constantly making effective decisions to direct your time toward the activities that are most important in hitting your goals.

If you say “I didn’t have time to do that,” you are essentially blaming something else – some other force of time – for not being able to do something. In reality, you chose to do something else instead and you need to be aware of that and accountable for that decision.

If that decision was spending more time with your family or watching the football game, there’s nothing wrong with that, just be aware and accountable for the decision you made.

I’ve gotten frustrated with staff before and told them if you don’t hit your goals for the week I’d like you to say the following to me:

“I decided that everything else I spent working 40 hours on last week was more important than what you asked me to do.”

Harsh? Well, it’s to make a point. I’m sick and tired of people pretending they don’t have control of their day or week. We all have tons of interruptions and distractions. You need to understand that if you don’t get something done, you’ve assigned a higher priority to whatever else you did.

One of the most important things any successful person can master is time management but you will never do it unless you accept that you are the one ultimately responsible for how you spend your time.

The other part of this is making sure you have clear goals and a purpose. You need to know what your goals are for the quarter, month, week and day in order to make those effective decisions about how to spend your time.

If you have clear goals, then when someone comes to your office door and asks you to do something, you will measure doing that task against what you need to get done for your goals that day, plus the list of other things you need to do.

If you don’t have clear goals, you might just go off and do whatever someone asks you to do that’s urgent to them. Or you might spend your day responding to emails and putting out fires.  Then you get to the end of your day and realize you haven’t gotten anything done.

I’ve found the more I focus on managing my time to hit my goals, the more it forces me to figure out how to do more in the limited amount of time I have every day.

It all starts with never saying “I didn’t have time for that.” I’ve told members of my team to call me on it if I ever say that.

So here’s a challenge for you. The next time someone asks you if you’ve done something, keep yourself from saying “no, I didn’t have time to do that.” It may be a little difficult but I’m confident you can do it.

Instead, say something like “I haven’t done that yet” or “I wanted to finish that sales proposal yesterday first before doing that.” I can guarantee you will feel much better about yourself and more in control.

By eliminating “I don’t have time” from your vocabulary you are becoming more accountable and you’re forcing yourself to be better at time management. You’ll be much more successful as a result!

How do you feel when someone tells you “I don’t have time?” Post a reply and I will take the time to reply.

One of the most important things any successful person can master is time management. ~Brendan Howe Tweet this

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Don’t Be A Status Quo Leader

January 26, 2011 by

I have never liked status quo, any status quo leader.  Maybe someday when life is perfect; when there is no disease or conflict and I am all knowing and want for nothing……maybe then I can accept status quo.  Of course at that point I will be so prideful, arrogant and annoying that I will have to change my status quo.  So I guess I will never like it.

As we all know, status quo is to “keep things the way they presently are” (Wikipedia).  As business leaders we can rarely if ever be accepting of  “keeping things the way they are.”  It is our job to succeed and achieve, in fact it is our responsibility.  It is our responsibility because there are so many people depending on us.  Employees depend on us, colleagues depend on us, vendors, partners, suppliers, customers, heck even our country and the world economy depend on our success; but most of all, the well-being of individuals and families of everyone we can touch depend on our ability to succeed.

This topic has always been a sore spot for me.  I see people immigrate to the United States from other countries and be here 20 years and still cannot speak proper English.  I see people stuck in dead-end jobs that stay there for years and years because they do nothing to increase their knowledge or training.  We have all seen people with annoying habits or weaknesses that they never put any effort into changing. 

We all have our “some-day’s” and “tomorrow’s”.  You know, that excuse that pulls us back and drags us down, sometimes for our entire lives. Someday I will learn to be a better sales person.  Someday I will learn to speak in front of large groups.  Someday I will learn how to communicate better.  Someday I will learn how to manage my money.  Someday I will take a vacation with my family.  Someday I will show my employees how much I care for them.  Someday I will write that book.  Someday I will overcome such and such bad habit or someday I will spend more time with my kids.  Tomorrow I will tell my spouse how much I care for them.  It seems they never stop.

Status quo is something we often think of as a kind of “environmental” problem that is happening around us, something that is caused by others or caused by the “system”.  But bring it back and bring it closer to the individual level, to the personal level.  If we could foster this value of progression in ourselves and in those that work for us, think about what could be achieved.  If every employee had a learning mentality and a mentality of overcoming their weaknesses and learning new skills, how much more powerful of a culture could we have at our companies?  We would not just have a lone leader progressing, but we would have an army of people going the extra mile and improving every day.  How much greater profit and greater happiness could be produced in this scenario?  How many more people could we positively touch?

I mentioned that this is a sore spot for me, because changing our current state does not necessarily have to be hard.  Learning a new language is hard, but if you learned 10 words a day or 5 words a day, how much greater could you learn to speak that language, than if you had done nothing?  Dr. Nido Qubein, said: “I learned English by memorizing ten words a day.  Each day, I would review the words I had learned the day before and then study 10 new ones.  By the end of the week I had added 70 new words to my vocabulary.  It was this consistent effort, that enabled me to achieve fluency in English.” Nido is a self-made raving success.  

This is not some rant on immigrants.  What I am driving at is that small consistent effort is the key to overcoming status quo.  There are thousands of stories like this, where someone took small consistent steps and were able to overcome great challenges, setbacks or weaknesses.  By only reading about 5 pages a day, you can read an average business book or self-improvement book a month.  There is a wealth of information in books that will help us overcome just about any challenge we face, although more effort is often spent searching for the remote control.

The biggest excuse I hear is “lack of time”.  It really is an excuse.  What you are really saying is: “I enjoy staying in my miserable state and I cannot prioritize what I do so I will just stay miserable and keep making excuses.”  “Miserable” might be a strong word, but there is almost always some level of suffering by not progressing.  That could be missing out on a better salary, a healthier lifestyle, amore loving relationship, a more profitable business, etc….  People will do what is most important to them.  If you find yourself watching TV a couple hours a week and not working for 5 minutes a day on something that could help you, then obviously the TV is more important.  If you spend your time always doing menial tactical work, and never strategizing to grow the business, then obviously business growth is not that important.

There is always a better way to do something or squeeze more time in somehow.  Great leaders know this and do not make excuses; they focus on what is important to them and their organization.  They will make time. 

No matter if you are a CEO or a high school drop-out, I invite you to look at your life and to consider what small and consistent effort you could work on that might have an impact on your current situation. Then start acting.  Don’t be haunted by “some-day’s.”

Please leave a comment or send me a message through the contact form.  I’d love to hear what you think and I am always happy to help.

Filed Under: Status Quo Leadership Tagged With: , , , , ,