Recently, I attended a function that had the Vice-President of Ghana in
attendance. It was the first time I had seen him at close range, and it felt
cool.
The start time advertised on the ticket was 6.30pm. I spent the morning with my
two sons visiting some friends and family and got back home around 2.00pm. At
3.00pm, I went to the bedroom to take a nap, telling my wife wake me up at
4.30pm, so I could dress and leave home at 5.30pm for the program, which was
taking place in Accra. I usually give myself an hour to drive from Tema to Accra
for functions. I had a very deep sleep, and Vivian woke me up a few minutes to 6
pm. I guess she saw how tired I was and decided to have mercy on my soul!
Anyway, I was on my way soon enough and got to the venue of the program just
before 7pm. The Vice-President arrived soon after I did.
A few minutes after 7pm, one of the masters-of-ceremonies (MC) came on stage and
called the meeting to order. He then invited a pastor to give the opening
prayer, after which the chairman for the occasion was introduced. The speech by
the chairman, in response to the introduction, was delivered with fervour and
the message was apt, relevant to the theme for the celebration.
The MC came back on stage just as the chairman was ending his speech and told
the chairman, and us all, that we were supposed to have been on air (TV, I
guessed) at 7pm, but we were still not on air, so he would have a contract with
the chairman to call him back on stage to give his speech again, for the benefit
of the nation! My senior colleague at Unilever and mentor, Yaw Nsarkoh, once
said that sometimes we have to laugh at outrageous occurrences to prevent us
from laughing. I laughed at the incredulity of the suggestion!
Dinner was served, and at 8.30pm, the MC called up the pastor to repeat the
opening prayer, the chairman was introduced again, and the chairman repeated his
speech! I was really impressed that the chairman delivered with even greater
passion (well my companions at my table indicated that he had just eaten).
The event closed eventually at 12.30 am. We had been in the hall for five and a
half hours, and it was an awards program. I wondered why we couldn’t do it in
two hours, really. And was it the most cost effective use of executive time, of
the Vice-President’s time? I also wondered why the start time was advertised as
6.30pm when it was clear that the actual event would begin at 8.30 pm? Was it
because it was envisaged that the invited guests would be late, so let the time
be given two clear hours to make allowance for lateness? Was it just to get us
there to eat and wait for the actual start time?
A couple of months ago, I attended an annual general meeting which started at 11
am, even though the invite indicated 10 am to start. Why?
If you invite me to a meeting, and you know it will start an hour late, give me
the time plus that hour, so I am on time. I was in a meeting when someone came
an hour later than the time the meeting was to start. The meeting did start an
hour late, anyway, so when the person was queried, he quipped “I know I am late,
but I am on time!” I didn’t find the remark funny.
We laugh about Ghanaman’s time but it is becoming a national joke. And it even
shows in the lackadaisical attitude we display when our work causes delays on
other’s schedules. I will explain.
On Friday 20 August 2010, I was on my way to Accra from Tema when I saw some
work being done on the motorway, on a bridge close to the Abattoir. “Traffic
cometh!” I thought. The following week, the traffic on that part of the road was
so great it was a headache leaving work to Accra from Tema. The impact on
commuters’ time is of no concern to the contractors. In some other jurisdiction,
an alternative route would have been found so traffic build-up is minimised. Not
so in Sikaman.
You go to offices, banks, pay points at our utility and telecommunication
companies and the longer the queue for services, the more important the workers
there feel, it seems.
In discussing this issue of lack of respect for time with George Owusu-Ansah, a
senior colleague in Unilever, now working in Singapore, he told me that in an
environment where nothing is predictable, people tend to make and accept excuses
and then arriving late at a meeting becomes a norm, not an aberration. He went
further to say that for the couple of years he has lived in Singapore, he has
never spent more than thirty minutes driving to work from home. Such
predictability makes for good planning. It takes me fifteen minutes to drive to
Tema from home without traffic, with normal traffic, forty-five minutes is
average. I have spent two hours making the same trip some days.
With such erraticism, one could learn not to even set off on time and does not
target arriving on time for an event, knowing that just a simple “Oh, traffic!”
will suffice. And that is when the indiscipline starts. But don’t develop this
bad habit, don’t.
In my view, two qualities of a serious person suffice: the person keeps to time
and keeps his/her promises.
Promises. We complain that our politicians don’t keep their promises but do you
keep yours? Gary Jones, a former Training manager at Unilever Ghana, made a
statement has been with me for a long time: “A good manager is one who does what
he says he will do.”
Keeping to one’s time is a promise honoured. Keeping your promise or otherwise
is a reflection of your integrity. It always amazes me how businessmen in Ghana
act as if the number of times they fail to keep their promise is directly
proportional to their status as crack businessmen. It gives me a very negative
impression of that person. Some take your call, and promise to get back to you
by email or phone, because they are engaged, in a meeting or another activity,
and never get back. It is better not to promise if you know you cannot deliver,
keeping to the advice by George Washington, “not [to] undertake what you cannot
perform, but be careful to keep your promise.”
On a daily basis, in meetings, we promise to follow up on an action, to send an
email by a certain time, to update our teams with relevant information to aid
the achievement of a specific milestone. Any time we fail to deliver to such a
promise, we dent our integrity, we waste time, we fail our team and company.
If we will be taken serious as a nation and a people, we need to urgently tackle
the canker of lateness. And we have to learn to spend less time during
functions. A four-hour church service can easily be over in two hours if we cut
off the lengthy announcements and just paste them on the notice board, giving
only the highlights during the notices. I used to visit an Assemblies of God
church in Nottingham. The entire service took two hours – from the welcome
session, praise and worship time, testimonies, music ministration, sermon and
announcement, and enough time to have tea at the end of service! All in two
hours. And I always felt well-fed and nurtured spiritually (and physically)
after service. Most churches in Sikaman have a lot to learn, to cut down the
time wastage we exhibit every Sunday. Many programs, especially our music
concerts, are guilty of this.
The urgency of the precarious state of our nation is at variance with our lack
of urgency, acting as if time is an unlimited resource. To borrow from Loren
Eiseley, we need to refine our sense of time, to upgrade our appreciation of
this resource and utilise it profitably. Philip D Stanhope speaks my mind when
he says: “Know the true value of time; snatch, seize and enjoy every moment of
it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination.”
We re-denominated our cedi in 2007; perhaps, we should have done same to the
Ghana Maybe Time! Indeed, time is money, time lost is never found again and we
should respect it as such in this land of our birth – Sikaman.
Action Exercise
Quite simple: keep the promise you just made before reading this article. Plan
to be on time for the next meeting you have planned, after reading this. And
make it a habit. A habit is something you do repeatedly. The change we seek in
our attitude towards time consciousness and keeping promises in our nation
starts with you, and now.
Quotes
“We are all manufacturers – making good, making trouble or making excuses.” H V
Adolt
“You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” Will Rogers
“Always tell yourself: The difference between running a business and ruining a
business is i.” Frank Tyger
“Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues. Always insist on it in
your subordinates.” Donald Robert Perry Marquis
“Punctuality is the soul of business.” Anonymous
“I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for hours will take care of
themselves.” Philip D Stanhope
“You may ask me for anything you like except time.” Napoleon Bonaparte (to one
of his officers)
“Those who make the worse use of their time are the first to complain of its
brevity.” Jean de la Bruyere
“Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it,
and others do just the same with their time.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Wasted time means wasted lives.” R Shannon
“From time wasted there can be no salvage. It is the easiest of all waste and
the hardest to correct because it does not litter the floor.” Henry Ford
“Nothing inspires confidence in a business man sooner than punctuality, nor is
there any habit which sooner saps his reputation than that of being always
behind time.” W Mathews
“Be avaricious of time; do not give any moment without receiving it in value;
only allow hours to go from you with as much regret as you give to your gold.”
LeTourneux
“Lost, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, sixty golden minutes. Each set with
sixty diamond seconds. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.” Horace
Mann
“Without the management of time, you will soon have nothing left to manage.”
William D Reiff
“Thus we play the fool with time and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds
and mock us.” William Shakespeare
“Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained.”
Stendhal
“Waste of time is the most extravagant of all expense.” Theophrastus
“A promise is an I.O.U.” Robert Half
“We must leave exactly on time. From now on everything must function to
perfection.” Benito Mussolini
“The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.” W B Yeats
End note
Nana Damoah is the author of Through the Gates of Thought (April 2010) and
Excursions in my Mind (October 2008), both published by Athena Press UK.
All these articles are listed on his blogs Nana Awere Damoah
(www.nanaaweredamoah.wordpress.com) and Excursions in my mind
(www.excursionsinmymind.blogspot.com) as well as on the author’s Facebook pages.
Both books can be purchased online from www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, and
www.athenapress.com, as well as Amazon sites in France, Germany, Finland, Japan
and Canada. You can also purchase them from Exclusive books in South Africa and
Botswana, Kalahari.co.ke in Kenya and and other online outlets.
In Ghana, obtain copies in Accra Silverbird bookshop (Accra mall) and Beacon
Books, East Legon.
Contact Nana on +233264631209 or ndamoah@yahoo.co.ukfor any enquiries.
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