In a nation that
loves clichés, proverbs and sayings, I often hear the phrase, “Time is
money”, but I have very rarely seen evidence that we really believe
that to be the case. Businessmen especially epitomize this worldview by
applying extraordinary pressure on their staff. It takes twice or three
times as long to get something done here in Nigeria than in developed
countries. Why? It must be something to do with our mindset.
We seem to value
time in cyclical phases and seasons rather than in minutes and hours.
We know the value of childhood, adulthood and old age, and we accord
each stage of life its due respect. We recognize the benefits and
importance of our rainy and dry seasons, and the havoc it creates when
a season starts late and/or ends early. For some reason I cannot
fathom, we do not seem to understand linear time measured in minutes,
hours, and days… and this is demonstrated most markedly in the
phenomenon that we call “Nigerian Time”.
Nigerian Time
We are, by no
means, the only nation that operates by two clocks — Greenwich Mean
Time and national time — but we are particularly bad about keeping our
promises as they apply to timekeeping. We have a built-in variance of
up to two hours-plus for any appointment. It means that if I am invited
to speak at a 3pm event and I arrive at 3.30pm, I am ON TIME. It means
that when you make an appointment with a government official or a
business tycoon for a 15-minute meeting, you need to block out your
entire morning because you don’t know when they will see you. Operating
by Nigerian Time also means that if you turn up at the advertised time,
you are EARLY!
How much is
Nigerian Time costing us? Recently, at the launch of my father’s
autobiography, it was remarked by several people that guests who were
over 65 years of age all arrived early or on time. The under-65s
trickled and straggled in, some of them arriving just five minutes
before the advertised end of the event. For the older generation, it
was important to show their support by keeping the appointment and
participating in the whole event from start to finish. To the younger
generation, it seemed more important to show their faces, even if they
missed the event itself.
And that attitude
is reflected in today’s workplace. Presence is given priority over
performance. Staff generally do not arrive at work early unless they
live very far away and wish to avoid the early morning rush, in which
case they arrive over an hour earlier than resumption time and then
proceed to catch up on their sleep at their desks. We arrive slightly
late or very late, and take between 15 to 20 minutes to settle in to
work — putting our bags away, starting up equipment, greeting
colleagues, getting a drink, rushing out to the ATM to get money for
personal errands. If the employees are dissatisfied or have low morale,
it is even worse! Real work may not commence for over an hour. For
companies who make their money on billable time, it is easy for them to
calculate how much money each employee’s time is worth, and how much
the lack of punctuality by them or their clients and customers is
costing the company. They can multiply 15 minutes’ late, 5 days a week,
48 weeks a year (with vacation time removed) and, hey presto, that time
has a value.
According to an
article in HR Magazine of November 2005, chronic lateness costs US
businesses more than $3 billion dollars per annum in lost productivity,
across all types of jobs, office, factory, casual, and professional.
Why are people late? Research has shown that it is a combination of low
self-control, lack of discipline, people who like risk-taking or the
excitement of rushing, and poor time management skills.
What is the cost to
the individual of poor time-keeping? Always being late has a ripple
effect and threatens what a person has planned to achieve in a day.
That danger of not being able to do as much as possible with the
available time, through no one else’s fault but your own, causes health
and management problems — anxiety, pressure, extra-long
workdays, resentment toward management for insisting that staff stay at
work till however late until they finish their work.
In 2003, The
Economist reported on a national punctuality campaign in Ecuador, South
America. The country’s Olympic walking champion, Jefferson Pérez,
launched the campaign that was promoted by Participacíon Ciudadana, an
NGO that calculated that ‘Ecuadorian time’ was costing the South
American country $724m per annum (4.3 percent of GDP). Over 50 percent
of social and public events start late, with government ministries
being the worst offenders. It seems that timekeeping was also linked to
self-importance, with greater self-importance leading to greater
waiting time.
The government
backed the campaign with personal leadership by the president, Lucio
Gutiérrez, who led by example by managing to get to the launch on time.
A massive advocacy effort was run with posters on timekeeping,
time-consciousness and time/meeting policies handed out to offices and
schools enjoining and scolding Ecuadoreans for wasting other people’s
time, and it worked.
Local councils and airlines committed to keep to time. Latecomers
were locked out of private and public meetings. Public officials who
arrived late at events were named and shamed in local newspapers. I
think Nigerian Time needs similar treatment. If lateness costs a
country like Ecuador close to N150 billion per annum, I wonder how much
it is costing us in money, in high blood pressure, in corruption and in
relationships. We need to take a long, hard look at Nigerian Time. Just
the way the ‘no broken windows’ policy in New York led to a drastic
reduction in crime, perhaps, a ‘no Nigerian Time’ policy here will lead
to a drastic leap in productivity and wealth. We have nothing to lose
by trying and everything to gain.
