Punctuality and Ego

Maybe it comes from working with designers at AND 1 and MTV, or from my summer at McKinsey, but I really like visual representations of data and visual frameworks for breaking down problems.

The best visual frameworks clarify the world with simplicity and present the problem in the most basic elements. One of my favorites is the 2X2 matrix. I have been playing around with the idea of adding a section to this blog called 2Xtuesdays for awhile and never did anything about it.

Then my friend Rob Go was late to a meeting and let the world know with this tweet:

[caption id=”attachment_645" align=”aligncenter” width=”300" caption=”Rob was late, but showed the world he has a small ego. Nice.”]

[/caption]

Schedules are crazy and it is hard to be on-time no matter how hard you try, but the real test is how you deal with being late, when you are inevitably late to an important meeting. I respect the public apology and have laid out a 2x2 framework that I think helps explain the choices we have with respect to punctuality and ego:

[caption id=”attachment_653" align=”aligncenter” width=”300" caption=”just don’t be the guy in the bottom right…”]

[/caption]

Thanks Rob for the inspiration, and I hope inspiration for the next 2Xtuesday will occur in the comments.