The live hour
Whose Evening It Is, and Who Decides
The inconvenient hour lands on whoever has least standing to object, and in a commercial relationship that is reliably the party being paid.
Who is working when, for the people on this page
Our engineering office, Auckland
Working 08:00 to 17:00
The client's technical department, Lisbon
Working 08:00 to 17:00 their time, which is 19:00 to 04:00 here
two parties · five days of the seven are working days for all of them · Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
Five working days a week in common and not one working hour. Everything on that contract was going to be written down whether anybody planned for it or not.
Before moving another call into somebody's evening, it helps to Monitask productivity analytics and check how the work is actually distributed across projects and days.
The surrounding operational question can also be checked against material from Australian Government.
One weekly call, and who is in the room at the hour it was set
Us, Hamburg, who proposed the time
The call sits at 16:00, which is the end of our afternoon
The supplier’s commercial manager, Taipei
23:00 for them, taken at home, and never once mentioned
The supplier’s production manager, who would answer most of the questions
Available at any hour up to 17:00 their time, and has never attended
three parties · five days of the seven are working days for all of them · Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
The person who could answer most of what gets asked on this call has never been on it, because the hour was set at the first meeting by the party it suited and has not been looked at since. One team’s own job.
Somebody is going to be up early or at their desk late. Which of the parties it is gets decided once, usually at the first meeting, usually without discussion, and then holds for the life of the relationship.
It lands on whoever has least standing to object, which in a commercial relationship is the party being paid.
How the default forms
The first call is arranged by whoever called it, at a time that suits them, because that is the natural thing to do.
The other side accepts it. A supplier in the first weeks of a relationship is not going to open by negotiating the meeting time, and a request to move it reads as awkwardness before any work has been delivered.
That first time then becomes the standing time, and the standing time becomes invisible. Six months later nobody remembers that it was chosen in a hurry by one party.
Why it is worth revisiting
Not out of fairness in the abstract, though that is a reasonable motive.
The practical reason is that the party attending at an awkward hour attends worse. They are at the end of a long day, they are at home, they are less willing to raise a difficulty that will extend the call, and over time they send somebody more junior.
The quality of what you get out of the call declines, slowly, and the decline is attributed to the relationship rather than to the hour.
Where it fell, counted
Twenty-eight weeks of one standing call, sorted by who was inconvenienced.
| Weeks | Who was at an awkward hour | What happened about it |
|---|---|---|
| 21 | The supplier | Never raised by either side |
| 2 | Us, while a colleague travelled | Moved immediately, both times |
| 3 | Nobody, because the clocks aligned | Not noticed by anybody |
| 2 | Nobody, because the call did not happen | The work continued regardless |
Nobody decided that distribution. It is the default produced by never asking, and the second row shows how quickly the same arrangement moves when the inconvenience lands on the other party.
Three workable arrangements
Rotation. Alternate between a time that suits one party and a time that suits the other. Simple, visibly fair, and the thing most people reach for first.
The difficulty across a very wide spread is that rotation means each party is inconvenienced half the time rather than nobody being inconvenienced, which may be worse than an alternative that avoids the live hour altogether.
Splitting. Two shorter conversations, each inside both participants' working days. Costs more total time and removes the inconvenience entirely. Usually the right answer where the spread exceeds about ten hours.
Trading. One party takes the awkward hour and gets something for it — a shorter call, a different day, the agenda set to their priorities, or simply an acknowledgement in writing that it is being noticed.
The thing to avoid
A standing call at an hour nobody has ever discussed, which both sides privately believe the other side chose deliberately.
| What happens | How it is read by the other side |
|---|---|
| Time set at the first call and never mentioned | A statement about who matters |
| Time moved when it suits the customer | Confirmation of the above |
| Time never moved when it suits the supplier | Confirmation again |
| Time discussed once, openly, and then settled | A working arrangement |
The last row costs five minutes once.
The question to ask
What time does this call actually land for you? If it is outside your working day, say so and we will find something else — I would rather move it than have you taking it at home.
Two sentences. Asked by the customer, they are remembered for a long time, because almost nobody asks.
Asked by the supplier they are harder to say, and the form that works is to offer rather than complain: "would ten o'clock your time suit you as well? It would let me have the production manager on the call, which I cannot do at the current time." That gives the customer a reason to agree that is about their own interest.
The case for no live hour at all
Worth naming as the honest conclusion for the widest spreads.
Where the only common hour costs somebody their evening every week, the arrangement that works is usually written coordination with occasional calls arranged when something needs one. That is not a failure to collaborate. It is an accurate response to the fact that the two working days do not overlap, and pretending otherwise costs one party an evening a week for a benefit nobody has ever measured.
Raising it after six months
Harder than raising it at the start, and worth doing anyway.
The obstacle is that the arrangement has worked, in the sense that the calls have happened, and asking to change it now implies that something has been wrong for six months.
The framing that avoids this is forward-looking rather than retrospective: not "this time has never suited us" but "we are adding the production manager to this call from next month and he finishes at five — could we move it earlier?"
That gives everybody a reason to agree that is about the work. The original imbalance is corrected without anybody having to acknowledge that it existed, which in most commercial relationships is the only way it is going to be corrected at all.