Mix Up Your Meetings – part 3 (start times)

Problem:

People are late for your meeting. They usually wander in 5 minutes late, using some excuse that their previous meeting ran late.

Solution:

Start your meeting 5 or 10  minutes later, after the hour or usual start time.  Then actually start the meeting exactly at that time.

At school there was always some kind of travel time between classes to allow you to get to your next class on time.  Sadly, some work environments cause people to have back to back meetings scheduled by different sources with no break time in between.  You either have to leave your preceeding meeting early, or show up to the next meeting late.

Well, you can’t control everyone else’s meetings, but if you’re in charge of one you can give people at least one break during the day.  Schedule your meeting at precisely five minutes after the hour, like 10:05 am, or use some odd number like 10:07.  Make sure the time is clear in the meeting announcement and that you will start on time.

If you make this a habit – using odd times and starting on time – then you’ll be known and appreciated for giving people some breathing room between their meetings, and they’ll start showing up on time if they don’t want to miss anything.  (And make the beginning of the meeting really good so they won’t want to miss it.)

If people like it, the practice might just spread.

(When we implemented this in a whole organization, it changed the culture of how they interacted with each other.)

Do you have any meeting tips?  (I know it’s a topic with lots of room for improvement.)