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

Do You Pitch in Poetry and Manage in Prose?

Norman Rockwell 'Freedom of Speech'

Mario Cuomo, the Governor of New York between 1983 and 1994, famously observed of the political process: ‘You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose.’ For politicians election campaigns are all grand themes, lofty ideals and elegant words. The day-to-day task of government is, by contrast, much more about hard bargaining, cold calculation and compromised action.

Of course, there’s been precious little poetry in the election currently concluding in the UK. Nonetheless, Cuomo’s dictum rings true, and it has a resonance for us in the world of commercial creativity. We would perhaps reluctantly agree that, in most circumstances:  ‘You pitch in poetry; you manage the business in prose.’

Classically, pitching is all theatre and personality; enterprise and enthusiasm; big ideas and limitless possibilities. If we’re fortunate enough to win a pitch, we soon come down to earth with a bump. Most of our proposed executions lie bleeding on the floor before us, victims of budget practicalities and Year 1 caution. (‘I think that will be brilliant in Year 2.’) We rapidly embrace a world of timeframes and team allocation; Gantt charts and organograms; status reports and conference calls. It’s all too easy to lose sight of our original hopes and plans. Before too long we do indeed find ourselves running the business in prose.

This begs certain questions of Agency leadership: Do we too readily set aside the optimism and open mindedness of the pitch for the harsh realities of everyday account management? How can we maintain some level of inspiration in the business once the aspiration and ambition of the pitch are a distant memory? How do we sustain some poetry in amongst the prose?

Moreover, in recent years the distinction between the pitch dynamic and day-to-day account practice has been blurred somewhat. As the world of communication has become more complex, as media have fragmented and technology has proliferated, pitching Clients have sought more than stirring words and lateral leaps. They want to know up-front about global networks and operating systems; capabilities and costs; partnerships, platforms and processes. They want to get their lawyers, accountants and procurement people involved. There’s a good deal of prose in the contemporary creative pitch.

This poses fresh questions for the pitching Agency: How do we convey to Clients the potential of our core creative proposal, whilst at the same time reassuring them that we have the people and processes to get the job done? How much of the pitch should we give to ideas and inspiration, and how much to systems and methodologies? What is the right balance of poetry and prose?

Of course, the natural inclination of both Client and Agency is to isolate the inspirational from the procedural. It’s quite common to have separate conversations, in separate meetings, with separate people.  But some of the most impressive pitches I have attended have integrated the two. They have endeavoured to make the business of platform management and collateral creation exciting; to make the process as stimulating as the product.

Inevitably the modern Agency should learn to pitch and manage in both poetry and prose.

No. 134