I have been using Outlook for more than 25 years.  (Yes, this was before it was publicly available.)   As did my business partner and our Chief Operating Officer.

It was the way they always knew what was going on (as did I with them), where I was traveling and when.

As time went on, my calendar was shared with everyone in the firm.  However, that share wasn’t as transparent as the other two folks.  There was a variety of reasons for that.

First, I never wanted them to know when I was showing up  at their offices/facilities for a spot check.  That kind of defeats the purpose of a spot check.  (Just so you know, those visits were completely random, so that a visit to one office would not trigger another one that seemingly was on the same potential trip.)

And,  my schedule is also posted online.  (This one is far less transparent.  It just shows what times I may be available.)

It has been our corporate credo that we want to be a transparent firm.  Every employee knows our revenue, our expenses, and our profits.  Salaries- those were buried in an aggregate number.  (Actually not quite- the executive salaries were one line item, the R&D another, site and department managers a third, truck drivers a fourth, and everyone else listed fifth. )

It really paid off when the … hit the fan one year.  When one of our biggest units got involved in a knock-down, knuckles-bared, conflagration with a government agency.  And, we told everyone that the executives and managers were going to forgo their salaries (not their benefits- like a car, health care, etc.) for the duration of the battle and if the battle weren’t settled within 10 days, we were going to cut everyone else’s pay until we won.  Not one person complained, not one person left our employ.   (It didn’t hurt that everyone also knew that our truck drivers were then the  highest paid folks in the firm- yes, their salaries exceeded mine.)

When that battle was over and we asked everyone to put in two 55 hour weeks so we could catch up on our backlog, our biggest problem was getting folks OUT of the building after 10 or 11 hours of work.

There’s another value to posting your calendar for your staff and coworkers.  I- and everyone else- are forced to justify those decisions we make.  Why did Roy decide to schedule that meeting with XYZ?   It’s not a client anymore and we don’t even do work in that sector.  (There was a good reason- and when someone [that’s other than Sam or Steve] asked why, I told them.  They thought it was a great reason, too.)

But, having a public calendar made it possible for any staff member to contact me  to discuss matters.  Sometimes it was an idea for a new business concept, sometimes it was to suggest a better way to do something, sometimes it was because they wanted to know what they could learn or study to move to a different sector of our firm.

(Maybe now’s a great time to explain something else about our firm.  We share 25% of our profits- before taxes- with the staff of the firm.  25% is about what it takes to pay our taxes.  25%  to fund new ideas to test (that either would become a product we’d sell to another firm, prove the concept to obtain funding from a client, or to learn new skills to keep our firm on the cutting edge) or to upgrade the facilities.  And, the executives got the other 25%.  That profit sharing was our golden handcuffs.

Oh-  we no longer have extensive laboratory space or staff, so that share’s great diminished,upping the other percentages.)

So, when are you going to share your calendar?

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