Andrew Badham 2024-11-12 14:32:34
Should you be Mr Early, Mr On-Time, or Mr Late? Should you rush to get a project in ahead of time, stick closely to the deadline, or miss it if it means making your project that little bit better? These are the questions a paper published in November 2024 wanted to answer. Specifically, they wanted to know how the person receiving your work changes their perception of your work depending on when you hand it in.
To do this, they used 8 lab and field experiments and 10 supplemental studies to make sure they considered factors like, does the reason why the project is late matter? Does communicating that it will be late soften the blow? And does the reputation of the person submitting the work matter?
Only one of those mediating factors seemed to make a difference, which was the reason for the delay, and that was only if it was something beyond your control, like a hurricane.
Otherwise, what they found is that being on time is by far the best approach. Being early didn’t really improve perception. In fact, it might make it seem that you aren’t putting enough time and effort in. As you might have guessed, submitting late was the worst approach. Even if participants put in more time and effort, the recipients became more critical of the late work, which negated any positive effects.
What this illustrates is the importance of setting reasonable expectations for your customers deadlines. If we overpromise and underdeliver, that can have long term negative effects. On the bright side, you don’t need to rush production. Rather meet your agreed upon deadlines, because it seems it’s that promise that matters most of all.