Late People Lose

Norman Rockwell - Girl Running With Wet Canvas

'One good thing about punctuality is that it's a sure way to help you enjoy a few minutes of privacy.'
Orlando Aloysius Battista

We were coming from another appointment. We were making some final changes. We were waiting for the boards to be mounted. We were running just a few minutes late… But then we missed the train and missed the plane and missed the meeting. And so we lost the client’s confidence, lost the pitch and lost the anticipated revenue. We were denied the celebration, the bonus and the promotion. And we fumbled the opportunity to make some great work.

All because we were just a few minutes late. 

'A Man consumes the Time you make him Wait In thinking of your Faults - so don't be late!’
Arthur Guiterman

I read recently in the Guardian (Hannah Devlin, 10 Nov 2024) about research into tardiness in business. The study, published in the journal ‘Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes’, surveyed thousands of executives in the US and the UK. Participants were asked to rate pieces of work, such as proposals, product pitches, advertising and news articles. But first, they were told that the work was submitted either early, on time or late.

Even though respondents were looking at the same stimulus, work introduced as ‘late’ was consistently rated as worse in quality than material presented as ‘early’ or ‘on time.’ Moreover, a perceived missed deadline prompted evaluators to believe an employee had less integrity, and made them less willing to collaborate with that person in the future.

‘Everyone saw the exact same [material], but they couldn’t help but use their knowledge of when it came in to guide their evaluation of how good it was.’
Prof Sam Maglio, the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management (who co-authored the study with David Fang of Stanford University)

In the face of substantial work challenges, we may be inclined to procrastinate and delay; to plan optimistically rather than realistically; to hesitate and leave things to the last minute. We may plead for more time, for deadlines to be delayed, while we make the finishing touches, while we journey from good to great. We may convince ourselves that a superior end-product will justify the inconvenience and irritation.

But we would be wrong.

Punctuality may seem rather a modest professional virtue. But its absence leads to all manner of practical problems and negative perceptions. Tardiness taints relationships. It corrodes trust. And so, in the end, late people lose.

'It gets late early out there.’
Yogi Berra

'Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time.
There's something wrong here, there can be no denying.
One of us is changing,
Or maybe we just stopped trying.
And it's too late, baby, now it's too late,
Though we really did try to make it.
Something inside has died,
And I can't hide and I just can't fake it.’

Carole King, ‘It’s Too Late’ (C King, Toni Stern)

No. 503

The Homesick Brand: Are You from Somewhere or Anywhere?

Caspar David Friedrich 'Wanderer above the Sea of Fog'

I recently came across a BBC Radio 4 programme considering nostalgia (‘Word of Mouth’, 30 April). It transpires that nostalgia did not start life the way we think of it today: it was originally a yearning for home, rather than for the past.

The term was coined by a seventeenth century doctor to describe the intense homesickness felt by Swiss mercenaries fighting in the lowlands of France and Italy. (‘Nostalgia’ is formed from ‘nostos’ and ‘algos’, the Greek for ‘homecoming’ and ‘pain’.) Symptoms of nostalgia included dysentery, fainting and fever; despair, lethargy and melancholy. Some troops absconded, others committed suicide. Some heard cowbells. To guard against the ailment soldiers were banned from playing sentimental tunes.

In one celebrated case of nostalgia a diligent student dropped out and took to his bed, becoming uncommunicative and sore-stricken. When at length an apothecary sent him home, he recovered completely.

Nostalgia was quite commonly cited as an illness in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the American Civil War 5000 cases were recorded, including 74 deaths. As recently as 1918 nostalgia was named as the cause of death when a US serviceman passed away in France. The illness only declined with the frequent and easy travel of modern times.

I suspect many of us would still recognize this historic sense of nostalgia: the disorientation and discomfiture when we are far from home; the pining for roots, yearning for the familiar.

In his 2017 review of modern British society, ‘The Road to Somewhere’, the journalist and commentator David Goodhart argued that nowadays people can be divided into two camps: 'Anywheres', who have 'achieved' identities, from career and education; and 'Somewheres', who derive their identities from a sense of place and the people around them. Anywheres tend to be well-travelled, university-educated, urban and socially liberal. Somewheres are more likely to live in small towns or the countryside, to be less educated and socially conservative. Goodhart uses this distinction to shed light on the UK’s Brexit referendum.

Quite taken with this observation, I asked a number of my friends whether they considered themselves Anywheres or Somewheres. Given Goodhart’s definitions, I expected that most would self-identify as Anywheres. But nearly everyone claimed to be a Somewhere. They may have recognised themselves in the description of globe-trotting, metropolitan liberals, but fundamentally they wanted to belong to a particular place and community.

I found myself asking a similar question of brands: is yours an Anywhere or a Somewhere Brand?

When I was younger most brands seemed to be Somewhere Brands. Sony was reassuringly Japanese; Boddingtons was robustly Mancunian; Phileas Fogg was, eccentrically, from Medomsley Road, Consett. Provenance and place gave brands character, personality, charm. They explained their values, their outlook on life. Levi’s American roots prompted thoughts of freedom, rebellion and the open road; Olivio’s Mediterranean associations suggested health and happiness; Audi’s Germanic origins guaranteed its technical and engineering excellence.

In recent decades, with globalization and international marketing, we have witnessed the ascendancy of Anywhere Brands: brands are invented, conflated, migrated; talent is internationally recruited, factories are economically relocated, products are globally sourced. Consequently brands are assigned abstract moods or aspirational feelings, without specific reference to place or culture. They inhabit an ethereal neutral landscape of smiling faces, easygoing hedonism and fluid interaction. Origin stories are relegated to the occasional earnest hang-tag or an unread history page on the company website.

I wonder whether we’ve lost something along the way. Could many modern brands be described as just a little homesick? Are they somehow pining for a sense of belonging; yearning for association with a particular time and place? Shouldn’t all brands be Somewhere Brands?

Perhaps the recent trend towards the artisanal, authentic, crafted and locally-sourced suggests a return to roots, provenance and location. Perhaps the pendulum is swinging back the other way.

Or maybe I’m just being nostalgic.

‘So far away.
Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore?
It would be so fine to see your face at my door.
Doesn't help to know you're just time away.’

Carole King, ‘So Far Away’

No. 181