Time and tide wait for no one! The art and importance of managing time towards managing LIFE!!!
■ Mayur Kalbag is a Leadership Coach, Corporate Trainer & Author who regulalry does corporate training in Fiji. This will be his regular column in our Jobs section on Saturdays providing readers some useful tips. He can be contacted via email: mayurkalbag@ hotmail.com
We had to reach the clients office at 12pm to deliver an important presentation to the senior sales managers of that organization. This was also an excellent opportunity to convince and acquire profitable orders from them. We, which included myself and my two others, my colleague and our sales manager had to travel at least twelve kilometers to reach the client’s office and hence we had to plan accordingly, especially due to the traffic congestion in the city. One of my sales executives, Gary was very particular about punctuality and had already told us that, to reach on time we had to start at least an hour and half before. “Hey Mayur, the time of the presentation is 12.30pm and hence it is imperative that we reach by 12pm at the least so that we get time to prepare and set the laptop along with the projector. This is a very important and much needed opportunity for us to impress the client and the last thing we want is to reach late and thereby create a very poor first- impression” he said to me.
On the day of the presentation we were ready to leave for the client’s office at exactly 10.15am but there was a problem. Nathan, our sales manager and our boss was nowhere to be seen. I went to the front-desk executive to find out where he was but was told that he had not even come to office. It was 10. 30am and Gary and I were getting frantic. “Where is bosso?” Gary exclaimed. There we were, outside our office waiting earnestly for our boss to come and join us. It was then then we saw him arriving and that too quite casually. Gary and I were quite shocked to see that he was totally bereft of any sense of urgency. “Bosso, we have to leave quickly as we are already late!
The traffic is going to get worse and the more we delay the worse will be the chances of reaching on time” Gary said to him in a tone of anxiety. “Hey guys, there is no need to be so nervous. I know the sales head of that organization and I just spoke to him about the possibility of us reaching a bit late and he actually is fine and okay with that. So don’t you worry boys!” saying this, instead of joining us in the car he went inside to refresh himself with some coffee.