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Never Be Late to a Meeting Again with these 8 Power Moves
Bottom Line Upfront: Do you remember the last time you realized a meeting started without you or that you missed a meeting altogether? As a high-performing Operator, one power move is setting a phone alarm before each meeting. Seven more essential battle-tested meeting tactics are below.
Steve Kahle
February 22, 2024
⬆️ Mindset Shift:
Avoid the stress. Being late or missing meetings is an unfortunate reality without operational safety nets. Instead, Elite Operators are a little more disciplined and intentional. A few additional lightweight moves will almost guarantee you won’t miss a meeting or be late again.
📋 Avoid the Stress of Missing or Being Late for a Meeting
"Five minutes early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable.”
The Big Idea: To serve our team with operational excellence, we must aim to be early for our meetings. The right upfront planning and added buffer time will absorb common daily curve balls and allow us to protect our brand while honoring those we meet.
I. Many focus only on these two meeting variables:
Event: A calendar event is scheduled; others are invited as needed.
Travel Time: Estimated travel time is included for offsite meetings.
⚠️ HEADS UP: This approach is guaranteed to cause you to miss meetings or be late.
II. The high-performing Operator will layer in the following 7 additional lightweight moves to eliminate the chances of being late or missing a meeting outright.
💡 NOTE: Detailed screenshots of each item are below after this listing using a real-life meeting example.
MEETING TYPE | ACTION NEEDED |
|---|---|
Offsite meetings: | (1) Google Maps Confirmation: Use the ‘arrive by’ feature in Google Maps to get a precise travel time range - and then take the longer estimated time for the protective time buffer. See the example below. |
Offsite meetings: | (2) Google Maps Link: Send the Google Maps link to your phone, ensuring location precision. |
Offsite meetings: | (3) Exact Travel Block: The travel time will be entered as a precise value, taking the longer estimated time. |
Offsite and some onsite meetings: | (4) ‘Ready’ Block: Include a 5-minute calendar block to get ready for leaving for an offsite meeting. More time is scheduled if more preparation time is needed. ⚠️HEADS-UP: Most forget to account for getting ready or transition time needed for the next meeting, which can cause you to be late. Plan for that transition time to avoid the stress. |
Offsite meetings: | (5) Arriving ‘Early’ Block: Most forget this critical step of creating buffer time. Set a calendar event for 10-30 minutes, depending on the needed travel time. For example, an offsite meeting with about 15-30 minutes of travel time should have about 10 minutes of early arrival buffer time factored in. |
Most meetings: | (6) Extension Buffer: We should aim to start and end meetings on time. However, adding some buffer time after the meeting event is beneficial for a meeting starting late or going a little longer. |
All meetings | (7) Calendar Alarm: Before closing the workday, review all next-day meetings and set a phone alarm for each one. Generally speaking, a 5-minute alarm is used before onsite meetings. For offsite meetings, the alarm will be set to fire at the start of the ‘Ready’ calendar event. Often, the alarm will work in tandem with calendar-fired reminders. Missing a calendar reminder is easy and is sometimes caused by being away from your computer. However, it is almost impossible to miss a phone alarm. ⚡ PRO TIP: Speed things up using Siri or Google Assistant to speak your needed calendar alarms. See the example below. |
All meetings | (8) Com Check Before: Before leaving for an offsite meeting or right before an onsite meeting, check all inboxes, including email, text, and instant message programs like Slack or Teams. This is to see if someone has a last-minute delay or emergency that requires updating the meeting time. |
Let’s see these precision-based power moves in action.
📖 Prison Ministry Example
I am honored to lead a prison ministry team through The God of Hope Ministries, going into the Travis County State Jail in Austin, Texas, on Saturdays.
With the screenshots below corresponding to the numbered items above, I have applied each of the 7 power moves noted above with my weekly recurring meeting.
💡 NOTE: As life doesn’t happen in 15-minute blocks, my Outlook calendar is set for 5-minute increments.
Here we go…travel time is estimated.
Phone directions are sent to my phone.
Travel time, Ready time, Early Arrival time, and Extension get built in.
My Siri-spoken calendar alarm is set, allowing me to relax and know that my time on Saturday is on rails with no need to worry about possibly being late - which can be a big deal when getting into a prison unit.
That’s it. Stress-free meetings await you.
💥 Operational Action
I encourage you to implement these key steps and experience the before and after. While minimal, I will bet the extra effort will help you add a layer of precision so you arrive early to all your meetings without the stress. At a minimum, start with setting a phone alarm for your calendar meetings.
💡 What Do You Think?
Consider leaving a comment or a question so others can benefit and learn.
🛠️ Tools Mentioned
The screenshots were taken using my Outlook calendar, configured with 5-minute increments. However, the approach works for any digital calendar, even for 15-minute increments configurations.
☁️ AI Content Disclaimer
Grammarly Pro helped me keep my writing sharp. All of the content is 100% human-created by me.
✅ Mind Break
Since you made it this far, to wrap up Tim Durtschi, in this short video takes us from the top to the bottom of Jackson Hole ski resort.
🗓️ What’s Coming Up Next
Next week, we dive back into leveraging AI to improve our productivity.
Meet with precision and excellence,
Steve Kahle | ELITE OPERATORS
🔵 P.S.
P.S. If you find value, consider signing up for The Elite Operator Report if you haven’t already. I encourage you to share my content with others, which is a great way to help me build a growing community of elite operators. Also, check out my no-cost resources, like the Ideal Recurring Week Mini-Course. You can also apply for my next Productivity Accelerator, become a paid subscriber, or recommend me for executive coaching, operational and technology consulting, or speaking opportunities like this interview called Time Architecture, Transition from Stressed, and Distracted to Focused.
You can also contact me directly on LinkedIn or through this contact form.
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