Recently, I had the opportunity to deliver an onsite training class to a large Federal Agency. Since all students were from the same agency, I was able to notice a pattern to their comings and goings - they were always late to class. I mean really late. Like up to 30 minutes.
At first I attributed this to being on site and the students were distracted by their regular jobs. This seemed reasonable since the one person from out-of-town was always on time. But I had to know. So I asked.
It seems it was accepted practice to be late! A meeting at 1:00 means that the participants should start assembling rather than being there ready to start. Digging deeper I learned the employees take the lead from managers and executives who regularly practice this behavior.
Except this one time when a high level executive happened to get to a meeting on time only to find not everyone had yet assembled because they expected the executive to be late. That was the "culture." The result was to then "solve the wrong problem" as I am want to say.
Rather than set an example and ask that folks be on time, the executive began to send a "runner" to the meeting to see if anyone was there. If no one was there, he wouldn't show up! This "blew my mind."
If anyone has run into this, I would welcome hearing from you to help extend my research.
FG
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