The story is of a small incident from a very early point of my career. I was 18 back then. Our batch of interns was taken for an outbound training to learn leadership, problem solving, team work etc. For the training, we were taken to a place called Sakleshpur. Monsoon, lush green trees and mountains, wooden huts, creatures, full of nature, good food.

The trainer is a well known amazing persona Mr. Pankaj Trivedi. The first session of the training was in the morning at 9 a.m. Sharp at 9, at the meeting hut, this was the scene. There was Pankaj, rest of the mentors and a handful of interns from a batch of 23. More folks started arriving at 9:02, 9:05, 9:07, 9:10, 9:12. By 9.15, everybody was present and this is how Pankaj started.

We waited for 15 minutes to start. Is 15 minutes a big deal. You might think probably or not. 28 people (23 interns+5 mentors) waited for 15 minutes doing nothing. We lost 420 minutes which is 7 hours of time not doing anything. Is that a big deal now? I found this very interesting because I had never thought of time wasted as a group before. He also correlated it with respect. As a team, we all agree to give and take respect. We don’t somehow consider disrespecting someone’s time as a disrespect. After the first training, most people were not late by more than 2-3 minutes for the next training. And every single person was before time for all the subsequent training and also for most sessions for the next 2 years of our internship.

Till today, it has stayed with me and I like to be present at events both professional and personal on/before the time agreed.