USATODAY.com - I'm late, I'm late, I'm late

Any employee who arrives late to a meeting at Bruce Leon's company has to buy lunch — except Bruce Leon. The CEO of Tandem Professional Employer Services, a human resources outsourcing company in Oakbrook, Ill., says it's impossible for him to be late because the meeting doesn't officially begin until he walks in the door.

Tardiness is a chronic problem among chief executive officers. They arrive late for six in 10 meetings, according to a survey of 2,700 CEOs released in September by management consulting firm Proudfoot.

Time is money, and there is no better example of that than workers wasting time around a table, their combined compensation ticking away at thousands of dollars per hour. Bosses can be late for various reasons. But chronic tardiness, no matter how innocent, can so gum up the gears of a corporate work ethic, create resentment and hurt a reputation that experts address the topic as if it were a mental disorder.

Fresh evidence that bosses are chronically late would have been greeted with a yawn a year ago. But corporate scandal and the falling stock market have put CEO popularity so deep in the tank that this employee pet peeve is rising to the surface. There is even a hint of executive guilt in the air.

"Most of us are just arrogant," says Ronit Monzon, CEO of Educational Systems Employees Federal Credit Union in Bladensburg, Md. "Many of us overlook the importance of simple things like courtesy and respect."

At a high-tech company in California's Silicon Valley, employees have taken to locking the door two minutes after the start time, says Rich Brenner, a consultant who mentors CEOs. They still open the door, but they seem to take a measure of enjoyment in making the boss knock.

Workers at another company have pretended to be laughing long and hard at a joke when the CEO walks in, hoping he will feel he missed something. Some companies have meeting rules that involve late fees of up to $5 a minute, but those are most common at companies where the CEO is punctual.

The value of a CEO's time has justified a lot: Corporate jets, luxury apartments near the office. Even a cranky demeanor that would be unacceptable from other employees has been OK for the time-rushed CEO, or as Playboy Publisher Michael Carr told USA TODAY in the pre-scandal days of 2001, executives come off rude because they "have a low tolerance for stupidity."

In a recent follow-up interview, Carr says he believes the jets and apartments are justified. But he says bosses should not be late for meetings, and those left waiting have every right to feel put upon.

Beyond courtesy, there is an obvious financial incentive for the CEO to be on time. If Citigroup CEO Sanford Weill arrives 15 minutes late to a meeting with his four best-paid lieutenants, it costs the company $4,250. The four combined were compensated $42.5 million last year, not including stock options.

"I try to get to meetings a bit early so I can see what the mood of the team is and have an opportunity to interact informally before we get down to serious business," says Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, whose top four executives make more than $1,300 an hour, not including options. "We start meetings on time. If people aren't there, too bad."

AT&T President Betsy Bernard recalls a boss in Morristown, N.J., when she was working in Boston. He would regularly summon her to meetings. "Up at 4 a.m., at the conference table by 8."

She and others would sit waiting in the meeting room while the boss was nearby, talking on the phone or with an employee who is available to him all week.

"It is a blatant lack of respect for people," Bernard said in a speech. "A boss who does this kind of thing is taking part of somebody's life and pouring it down the drain."

CEOs are chronically late for different reasons, says Patrick Lencioni, author of the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Many are "adrenaline addicted" and hope their phone rings when they are about to leave. Fighting a fire is more fun than attending a meeting.

Leon says that describes him. There's no way he can resist picking up his phone on his way to a meeting, no matter how important the meeting.

"It drives me nuts. I'm always on time," says Danielle Pierce, Tandem's employee benefits manager who has worked 11 years for Leon. She says she once tried lying to Leon, telling him that 8:30 meetings started at 8.

Leon put a quick stop to that. He says he doesn't consider himself late if he gets there 15 minutes after the start, yet even by that definition he's late 75% of the time. He believes if he's early he's wasting time. His time.

Some CEOs intentionally arrive last because they believe it's better to waste the time of others, Lencioni says. He recalls the former CEO of a Fortune 500 high-tech company giving his staff an itinerary that said the corporate jet was leaving 45 minutes before he got there so that it could leave the minute he stepped on board.

"He wouldn't apologize; he just wanted to make sure the others were on time," Lencioni says. "It's an ego thing."

In her speech last month, Bernard outlined her seven golden rules of leadership. Rule No. 1: "Everyone's time is valuable. Everyone's." She went on to say that time is usually wasted down, rarely up, meaning the boss is the culprit.

It can be wasted up, says Samuel Johnson, 74, who retired as CEO of SC Johnson two years ago. He was usually on time, but could count on certain managers being regularly late.

"I would always put up with the guy who seemed to bring the best ideas to the meeting. I chalked it up to the absent-minded professor syndrome," Johnson says. "But the guy who was late because he was disorganized or didn't care, that always irritated me."

A lot of time wasted, up or down, is in meetings. One in five workers spends more than 20% of their time there, and 7% of workers spend 16 to 32 hours a week there, according to a survey by Hyatt Hotels released in August. The survey said that what most annoys attendees is when they feel their time is being wasted. The next most annoying thing, which may be the same thing, is when the meeting doesn't start or end on time.

The CEO late rate would likely be even higher except that most are punctual to meetings with important clients. Mark Nielsen, CEO of ISD, a Riverside, Calif., company that provides computer systems to the judicial system, says he will often let his executive staff wait, but is punctual with customers "unless there is a catastrophe."

Nielsen knows his tardiness bothers employees. They told him so in an anonymous internal survey a few years ago. He blames his busy schedule and trying to cram too much into a day. He says he understands because he doesn't like it when others are late.

"It's clearly on the surface of a hypocrisy," says Nielsen, who says he apologizes when he walks into a meeting that has started without him. "It's certainly not something to be proud of. You run the risk of giving the appearance that they're less important."

Unlike Nielsen, Leon usually runs late to customer meetings, too. As he runs out the door, Pierce says she is already on the phone to tell the client that Leon left 20 minutes ago and must be stuck in traffic. Then she calls Leon on his cell phone and reads him directions off the Internet. She has a file with ways for Leon to sneak in the back doors of clients' offices so that he can pretend he arrived earlier. Leon says he's attended defensive driving classes about 30 times because of his speeding.

Customers are forgiving, Leon says. "If I were on the golf course, it might be different," but he says they know he is late because he works hard at providing good service.

"There are reasons, but never excuses when I arrive late," says Gerald Kleisterlee, CEO of Amsterdam-based consumer electronics giant Royal Philips Electronics.

"Even the CEO needs to say, 'Guys, I'm sorry. This is not the standard of behavior that we want.' Then you move on."

CEOs. Proudfoot surveyed CEOs from nine countries and found that only French executives were late to more meetings than U.S. executives, 65% vs. 60%. Japanese CEOs were the most punctual, late 34% of the time.

Chronically late meetings can lead to "dormant dysfunction," where workers see it as downtime to socialize and don't come prepared, says Eli Mina, author of The Business Meetings Sourcebook. He says recent corporate scandals indicate that dormant dysfunction has infiltrated even the most important board meetings.

A popular solution is charging $1 to $5 a minute to anyone who arrives late. The money can be donated to charity, or saved toward an office party. Nielsen says ISD has tried late fees. They work for a while, but enforcement usually falls by the wayside after a couple of months, he says.

Such solutions won't work on CEO offenders with big egos, Mina says. Locking the door after the meeting starts, or telling the CEO that a 2 p.m. meeting starts at 1:45 can be "career-limiting moves," he says.

Mina sees few solutions for CEOs who arrive late out of ego. Those who are habitually late because they feel they must put out every fire can ask assistants not to pass along phone calls just before a meeting begins and schedule more time between meetings.

"If the CEO is not there on time, why should anybody else be there on time?" says Ron Goode, CEO of biotech company eXegenics in Dallas. "If being there on time is important, the CEO has to show that it is."