TIME IS MONEY

Time is money.

People say that.

Money is time.

People don't say that.

But it's true, in ways that change how people think about what they are doing.

One. You pay people to work for you. Wow. That seems ok. But it hides an insidious set of assumptions. That you have bought something less valuable for something more valuable.

But time isn't less valuable than money. Ask anyone diagnosed with a fatal illness. Ask anyone recently bereaved. Ask anyone with any sense.

Reverse the logic and you get something amazing. With a new respect for peoples' time, you hold the possibility of creating something special. By making the time of organizational life special, you cannot help making the experience of your organization special. By making the experience of your organization special, you will actually make more money. They don't teach you that at Harvard. Well, you don't need to go to Harvard to learn it, anyhow.

There's another linkage to time. Everyone is always selling time. They may not see it this way, but they are. Whether you sell goods or services, what you really sell is the quality of time a customer spends with them. Make that special, and you make your product special.

This thinking releases ideas. When asked to help British Airways revitalise their lounges, the trick was to stop thinking about them as physical spaces and start thinking about them as units of time - at that time, often blank meaningless pieces of time in a traveller's life. But waiting, just waiting, for ideas to add value to that time, to the benefit of people visiting them, and as a lever of brand preference.

This thinking about time has an individual consequence too. Spiritual, even. There are few jobs that cannot be defined as adding value to the time of others. Job is just a context for doing so. This is redemptive. Not only for the "others" but for the job holder. It is akin to the man with a broom, who, asked whether his job is the cleaner, replies, "No - I am building a cathedral!"