Just another five minutes... Whatever the reason, keeping others waiting is probably one of the quickest ways of losing their respect in Western culture. In African culture, however, leaving a conversation with one person in order to rush off to a meeting with another is seen as deeply disrespectful to the relationship with the first. So, what is more important: relationships or time?
After having worked with so many people in Africa I have really come to appreciate the value of relationships. Relationships matter. In Africa, if you want to do business, you first must have a relationship. Without a relationship there is no respect. Without mutual respect, there is no will to purchase or will to collaborate. Over the years billions of development funding dollars have brought few development results: hundreds of empty clinics, broken boreholes and neglected schools tell the story of insufficient investment in relationships with local communities.
Why? Because in the West, time is money. And while this may be the case in Africa too, the value of money is traditionally regarded much lower than the value of relationships. Wealth comes and goes. Relationships stay. So if a Western Aid organization thinks that it can use the approach of veni-vidi-vici (we came to Africa, we saw the problem, we conquered it with our money), it is sorely mistaken.
Interestingly enough, in looking at the Internet and at the incredible emphasis it places on relationships, the ‘African Way’ may just become the ‘High Way’! On the Internet, you first have to build a relationship with countless individuals, one person at a time, before you can start suggesting your services or products to assist them in their own quest in life. The consumer in the new economy is ‘calling the shots’ and does not allow him or herself to simply be bullied by in-your-face marketing. The consumer in the new economy is no longer going to buy something, just because the girl in the bikini holding the object is cute. Even eleven-year-olds now go on-line to research as much information as they can about a new toy – usually a computer game – they want, before they actually ask mom or dad to buy it for them. Information and word-of-mouth – those are the trends in the new economy.
So if relationships are so important, where does time come in? And what about punctuality?
In the Information Age time has become our most valuable commodity. If we work for someone else, we are paid for our time and the employer wants to make sure s/he gets his or her money’s worth. If we work for ourselves, we want to make sure that we get most out of the time we are working, so that we can enjoy more ‘free’ time to spend with people we love, things we like doing and travelling to exotic places.
The skill all of us have to learn is how to juggle time AND relationships. Masters of both will know how to ensure that they show up punctually for every meeting, while having left the last person they met with feeling as if they really had the full attention and benefit of the time they spent with this ‘Master’.
Similarly, on the Internet people don’t want to have to wait for slow downloading websites or have to click a hundred times before they get what they want. Here, building a relationship at the speed of a click is what counts!
Juggling time is particularly difficult for people – like me – who simply l-o-o-o-ve this beautiful world and the incredible people, ideas and knowledge that continuously are creating it. My mind is on a constant journey of discovery and I tend to get carried away by the ‘Wandering Spirit’ of African mythology, which carries me off into a new wonderland, forgetting all about the here and now, if I let it!
Sometimes it’s easier to learn what choices to make from knowing what NOT to do. So here is a list of behaviours that Nico, my husband, has been kind enough to point out to me, which have made it extremely taxing for him – a punctuality-guru! – to live with me over the years:
- Don’t be late for meetings, including meetings with your husband, children and friends. Keeping others waiting, no matter what the excuse, is showing a deep disrespect of their time, and most will also experience this as a disrespect of themselves. It takes a lot of hoop-jumping and a lot more time to earn back the trust that you lose in this way!
- Don’t let others emotionally hook you into staying in meetings longer than you had scheduled to stay. This used to be one of my key challenges: in meetings with especially people with a deep rural African culture I did not want to be rude and jump up to run off in the middle of a new point of discussion, which I’ve often seen especially people with a German culture do. But I’ve learnt that in every meeting it is possible to state up front how much time you have for this particular meeting and that, if there wasn’t time to discuss everything to the detail it needed, you would make time at a later stage again. In this way you are in control of the time of that meeting and you earn the respect of the people you are with, because they know you take the issues seriously enough to give them time, even if this takes a little longer.
- Don’t forget to look at the clock! I’m allergic against metal and I don’t like plastic watches, so I don’t wear a watch on my wrist. Instead I use my mobile phone to check the time. Problem is, that means digging it up from the depths of my handbag. And then, of course, I forget to do that! Enter a new trick mobile phone companies have thought of to help people like me: set an alarm or a meeting reminder to at least 15 minutes before you have to leave for the next meeting.
- Don’t underestimate travelling time! Plan enough time in your day to travel to your meetings. Rushing headlong into traffic is never a good idea and you will still inevitably be ‘just 5 minutes’ late. On top of that, imagine the monthly full-body massage you could spoil yourself with, if you didn’t have to budget for speed or parking fines all the time!
- Don't underestimate how long a certain task will take! Rather ‘over-budget’ time for individual tasks or projects. I’ve tried squeezing more ‘lifetime’ into an hour by trying to complete a day’s work into two hours. It doesn’t work. OK, I have managed to complete huge assignments in a ridiculously short time, but at what cost? Something or someone always gets hurt in the process. So take it easy, but take it.
In Stephen Covey’s book on the ‘8th Habit’, he mentions how his son came up with the phrase ‘Nothing moves as fast as the speed of Trust.’ I can certainly personally vouch for that!
Where trust exists, miracles happen. And punctuality – respect for other people’s time – helps to build that trust.
So, are you ready for a miracle?
PS: I decided to take charge of my time by investing in one of the most successful Internet businesses available which I can do from home, in my own time. If you want to do the same, visit www.reinedelarose.com.
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