Say when: the power of Time Speak

I was much younger when I first learned the thing I still use almost every day.

Fresh out of Sheffield Hallam University, I was living in Leeds and beginning what I then understood to be my adventure as a grown-up. I worked for a wonderfully fun company that made wonderful software for schools, alongside a genuinely good bunch of wonderful people, many of whom would become wonderful life long friends.

It was wonderful, but it wasn't really the kind of job that should have anything to do with Blenheim Palace near Oxford. But somehow we'd managed to acquire a training budget. So one morning we all climbed onto a coach and headed south.

For someone whose geographical exploration had previously extended little further than Nottingham, this felt like an expedition. I'd packed hiking boots, swimming shorts, winter gear and a compass. We stayed in a posh hotel outside Oxford, drank rather a lot of expensive lager and arrived the next morning at Blenheim Palace looking slightly less prepared for professional development than the organisers, or our bosses, might have hoped.

Blenheim is a ridiculous place to send a group of young people for training. It is enormous. Gold. Portraits. Marble. Churchill was born there. It is indeed Grand, with a capital G.

Amongst that grandeur, after rather good coffee had been deployed, we were ushered into a very smart room and taught customer-service techniques by Mary Gober International.

I remember surprisingly little of the day. Which is perhaps the highest compliment I can give the bits I do remember. Because a handful of those ideas followed me into the rest of my career. They turned up in workshops, conversations, difficult meetings, customer service and the business of trying to get people to understand one another.

But one of them stuck. Like, really stuck. I still use it – without exaggeration – almost every day. I only thought to write about it because, a few weeks ago, I found the certificate from that course while clearing out an old filing box.

There it was. A small piece of paper from a long-forgotten training day, sitting gathering dust in a box for twenty-something years. Which made me think about the strange economics of learning. You can spend thousands on a programme and forget it before you've reached the car park. Or someone can say one small, useful thing to you on a Tuesday morning, in a grand house, and it can stay with you for the next quarter of a century.

This was one of those things. It has a remarkably fun name. Time Speak.

And it is almost astonishingly, remarkably simple. Yet, don't let simplicity be mistaken for common.

One of the behaviours I most try to live by, and to look for in others, is the least glamorous one going: do what you say you will. It feels almost quaint. Almost old-fashioned. Like it belongs in a book from the 1800s. If you commit to a thing, do it. If you can't, say so early and honestly. Trust is built, subtly and cumulatively, through kept commitments – and it evaporates through vague promises and inconsistent behaviours.

The trouble is that most of the way we talk at work makes keeping a commitment much harder than it needs to be. "I'll get that over to you soon" is a promise with no working parts or commitment. The other person has no idea when to expect it. You have no particular moment to steer towards, nor align around, nor hold each other accountable for.

You see, it's soft on both sides – easy to make, and easy to slide right past without ever actually breaking it. Soon..... next month is sooner than next year.

Which is likely why so many good, hard working and perfectly sincere people end up looking unreliable: not because they didn't care, but because they never pinned the promise to anything.

Time Speak is a tiny but epic move – you don't just say what you'll do, you say when you'll do it for – and it morphs a soft intention into a real contract.

I could just leave the essay right here. That seems to be all of it, really. Add a time and everything moves from an empty statement to intent. But saying it isn't really enough – there's a practice of doing the work too. So, I'll continue.

The three levels

You can hear the difference straight away.

Weak: "I'll call you back." Better: "I'll call you back this week." Best: "I'll call you back on Thursday at 11 – does that work for you?"

The gap between the first and the third isn't just precision. It's respect. Naming an actual time means you've thought about the other person's day, their need to plan around the conversation or information, their right to know when they'll hear from you. In other words, you have considered their most finite of human resources – their time, energy and attention. It says you take the commitment seriously enough to nail it to a real moment in real time, for all involved.

But you then have to do what you say you will. You call at Thursday, 11, even if nothing has changed. No update, no news, nothing to report – you still call, on the dot, if only to say there's nothing yet and here's when there will be. Keeping the appointment when you've got good news is easy. Keeping it when you haven't is what turns Time Speak from a scheduling nicety into something that builds trust.

Do this for a while and you notice it building four interesting things at once, almost without trying.

It, of course, builds respect, because you're planning around someone else's life rather than your own convenience. It also builds accountability, because a specific time removes all the comfortable escape routes that vague language leaves open, which may be exactly why people don't use this. It builds discipline, because a visible, specific commitment forces you to actually think before you make it. That's a big one.

And – the one most people miss – it builds bravery. The tenth behaviour of those I believe builds a good company culture. Because Time Speak makes it necessary to push back honestly on an unreasonable ask, rather than nodding along to something you already know you can't do.

"I can't get the presentation done properly by Wednesday – there's more work in it than can fit in that time. However, I can have it with you by Thursday at 4" is a much harder sentence to say than "I'll try to get it done." It's also worth infinitely more to everyone in the room, because it's a real commitment instead of a hopeful one.

Our world is often full of unreasonable requests. But if we meet them with reasonable, specific challenges and Time Speak, well, that's better than saying we'll do it and not getting it done.

Raising the standard around you

The very pleasant side effect is that once you've adopted the habit, you start to notice its absence everywhere – and you start to do something about it.

I was on the phone to my studio's insurance company not long ago, and the agent told me they'd call back "at some point next week." I asked, politely, for a specific day and time. There was a small pause – and then they came straight back with a date and time, and called at exactly that moment too. They were entirely capable of Time Speak but I suspect nobody had ever told them it mattered.

That's the idea worth playing with: the default vagueness often isn't inability, it's just habit, and most people will happily make a specific commitment the moment they're asked to.

It's why the good parcel delivery companies (I know, there aren't many) don't tell you your parcel will arrive "soon" – they give you a window, sometimes down to the hour. That precision isn't only logistics; it's a signal of respect and reliability, and you feel it – assuming they then deliver on it.

The same thing matters at work. "I'll send it by Friday at 2," followed by an actual email with report at Friday at 2, compounds trust in a way "I'll send it soon" never can, no matter how many times you say it with confidence and pleasantness.

You don't need to overhaul how you talk. Just replace one vague commitment this week with a specific date and time – and then honour it, even if nothing's changed. After all, people often don't mind waiting if they're kept in the loop and told about it.

And the next time someone asks for something you genuinely can't deliver in the frame they're holding, propose a realistic one instead of a hopeful yes.

Do that consistently for a few months and something magical, well, it's not magic, it's habit, will shift: it stops being a technique you apply and becomes simply how you communicate. That's when it starts to compound into something that outlasts any single project – a reputation for reliability that opens doors and becomes your character.

Trust isn't given to you on a silver plate like the ones at Blenheim Palace. It's earned, one kept commitment at a time. Time Speak is simply how you make keeping them easier, more visible, and more likely – and it all begins with two small words most of us forget to add. Say when.

I still remember that technique, I remember the hotel and I remember the Palace. I remember I also didn't need the hiking boots, swimming shorts, winter gear and a compass. Although the compass was helpful finding my room the night before.