I was in London couple of weeks back. This was my first London visit and fortunately had done enough home work (on the internet) and hence trying to figure out Tube (the Subway train) and the busses wasn’t a problem right from the moment I arrived there. I took a Saturday off and went to sightseeing in London in a guided tour; London is beautiful and I am very impressed with the public transport and how traveller friendly it is. What I was more impressed was the time sense the guide showed - let me share the experience. We were 23 in total, people all from various countries and various walks of life, and guide would explain the whole history behind a building, event etc and used to let loose us (for photo ops, refreshments etc) but used to say you have to come back at a given time, say quarter past 11 and he *meant* quarter past 11 and few people of course would not appear and he instead of either waiting or complaining about them, would clap for all those who came on time and would wait just for couple of minutes and used to say “I am sure they would have found something which is worthwhile than this and we moved on. Remember every loss of a tourist would cut into his tips at the end but still time is time for him and because of his attitude we saw everything in London what we had planned for the day, but we were 5 less when we finally reached the hotel back. This is how *time* works here and so in most developed countries.
Now let me fast compare this to few foreign delegations and group seminars I have attended in the past. There were times when we were told to meet at a given time in the lobby or at a given place and many a times there were guys from the local place/country, heads of local organizations over there etc also to be present at a given time and I always found that we were always late to a given time. At one instance in one of the delegations, we were all told to meet at sharp 8.30 in the morning and about 15 delegates were to be present from our side and another 3 from the hosting nation side. 8.30am came and went, those three were all there on time and guess how many we were on time from our side – just two of us :–( Sad indeed. Worse, most of the delegates were having breakfast over a long chat with no worry about being on time and still worse others who were done were just accompanying them, and worse than all, we two had to hear the murmur of about Indians time sense, in IST how “S” stands for stretchable etc etc from the local delegates and what a shame? And we are supposed to be the tomorrow’s Premji and Narayan Murthy’s!!! No chance with this time management, I am sorry to be harsh but true in my opinion.
If we in the corporate world don’t fix this stretchable issue, everyone else will stretch our country and we can never be a developed country: it was a shame on our part and worse we don’t even condemn this either - the attitude of “chalta hai” - people don’t seem to understand to respect and to value the time of those who came on time; remember time is not just money, but respect too and everything else and this stretchable is a contagious disease and your employees will do the same and your whole organization will start following the same - meetings delayed, commitments delayed, promises delayed etc etc and the list goes on; think about it, fix it before it is too late otherwise we will all be too late as this is a very competitive global flat business world and one day it would have spread everywhere like cancer and before you know, our clients wont stretch but will skip us.
Manjunath M Gowda, S7 Software
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