Earlier this Fall, I went up to Green Bay, WI to see the Bears play the Packers on a Monday night. My son and I made the trip with my wifeโs brother and his son, who live in the LA area but somehow are huge Packers fans. When we arrived at the stadium on Sunday afternoon for a tour, I took this picture:
As we got out of the car, my nephew said โlook at the clockโ. I said โOK, itโs 1:15โ. Then he said โlook at your watchโ. I saw it was 1:00, and remembered about โLombardi Timeโ.
The legendary coach ran his meetings and practices on a rigid schedule. He not only expected you to be on time, he expected you to be 15 minutes early. He was known to say โEarly is on time. On time is late.โ This came to be known as Lombardi Time. Many Green Bay mothers used his lesson at home and raised an entire generation of punctual people !!
How is this relevant in business? Being late or starting late results in bad meetings. As I wrote in a post last year, when people complain about too many meetings, they really mean too many bad meetings. When your meetings start late, there are several effects. First, it is a time waster. Enough said. Second, it is disrespectful to the meeting organizer and on-time participants. Most companies have some version of โtreat others with respectโ as one of their values, and this violates that. Third, the late person rushes in and is so busy apologizing and making excuses that it disrupts anything productive going on and many times causes a restart or catch-up discussions. The final effect is more subtle. Part of having a great meeting is focus and attention. Participants need to โsegueโ from their daily โinโ the business activities and focus โonโ the purpose of the meeting. A few quiet minutes or socializing before the meeting starts can help create this transition in mindset.
While Iโm at it, another โgreat meetingโ killer is use of technology during the meeting. It is really quite distracting to have someone else checking their email on their phone while you are talking. There is no way that person is truly listening and again, they are not getting out of their โinโ the business mindset. I recently ran a half-day workshop for a client where the leader confiscated everyoneโs phones โ they were available only during breaks. And guess what โ the business survived !!
If you want to have great meetings, the first step is to start on time. Run your meetings on Lombardi Time !!
