Courtesy Counts

Courtesy Counts

Yesterday I finished up a two-day conference in Rotterdam. It’s 7am at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam and I’m sitting at a lonely Delta gate waiting for the onslaught of passengers, ticket agents and duty-free agents to descend on this place for the 9am JFK flight. There is a large African man sitting ten feet away and he has not learned the basics of cellphone courtesy. He has taken several calls with an absurdly loud ringtone that he seems to like enough to keep it going for a full minute before deciding to answer. He then speaks loudly in some African dialect and with great enthusiasm which I cannot determine is painful or pleasurable to him. It is simply loud and animated. In between calls he likes to watch and listen to (without headphones) some sort of French-African video or comedy show and he is apparently hard of hearing since it needs the volume way up. At least I can now narrow him down to Francophone Africa and I’m guessing Côte d’Ivoire based on my prior experiences there years ago.

In the spirit of something of value coming from every experience, he has kicked off a thought I have about the end of this conference I was attending. These sneaky organizers left a big presentation for the very last, I presume to keep everyone in their seats and not have the conference fizzle out on a Friday afternoon. It worked for the most part, and the auditorium was 75% full. I stayed for most of it and was richly rewarded. The penultimate presenter was a guy who introduced himself as a Kellogg MBA graduate. Only an American businessman would likely know that meant that he attended Northwestern University in Chicago. I was an immediate kindred spirit after two days of listening to Dutch, Danish, German and French accents that ranged from perfect English to some Pidgenized version of Euro-English. After the presentation, which I found relevant and interesting to my purpose at the conference, I buttonholed the guy, who had a rock star name. I literally mean his name was one letter off from David Bowie.

I asked him if he would let a Cornell MBA buy him dinner. I thought that would catch his interest, but he hemmed and hawed like a schoolgirl being asked on an unexpected date. He did just what the schoolgirl might do and said he was busy for dinner but would be glad to have a drink with me. Nice compromise which I took to be a courtesy play for a fellow American and a fellow conference attendee at an esoteric conference in an esoteric spot in the most over-populated corridor in the generally densely-populated EU. We had a date at the bar in several hours. For the record, I don’t drink, so meetings at bars are hardly my forte.

It so happens that I had arranged a 5pm meeting with a Dutch friend from a prior life, so I had suggested 6pm for this other bar rendezvous. My Dutch friend and I took up position at a table in the bar and ordered matching Coke Lights and a plate of nachos. It turned out we had a lot to catch up on, so it got to be 5:45 when my “date” rolled into the bar and waved. I asked for a minute to wrap up and he took a seat at the bar and happily ordered a beer. He looked very much at home with a beer at the bar. As I was forced to wrap up with my Dutch friend (suddenly it seemed like I was being rushed and was speed-dating, but not wanting to be too rude to a friend who had driven to meet me), suddenly another guy (decidedly Euro, but unclear at that moment from where) came up to our table and said, “Hey, you guys are from the conference, can I join you?”

I was suddenly very confused as to what to do. I was already being rude to my Dutch friend by rushing him, I had my next meeting circling the airfield at the bar five feet away, and now I was being asked by an unknown conference attendee if he could play with us. I explained that my Dutch friend was not with the conference, but that we were just wrapping up (least my friend have any doubts about my intentions), but that he was welcome to sit down with us. I made a command decision that being polite to this outgoing Euro-sort was more important than any private stuff I was going to talk with about my beer-guzzling American. I had already resigned myself to being rude to my Dutch friend since it seemed unavoidable. At least I had warned him that I only had an hour, and so I had only shorted him by 15 minutes.

With that I got my bar Yank to come and join us at the table. I vamoosed the nacho plate and coke bottles and we three sat down for proper introductions. We all exchanged cards in good business tradition (few of us save them after a day or so and after we have logged in with an email to the person). Now we had to sort out who we were. The Euro-dude and I had heard the Yank’s presentation so we knew him. We then each gave our respective who’s who pitch and we started laughing and scratching as social convention expects and a Friday night end-of-conference drink demands.

It turned out that the Yank was very interested in the proposition I gave him to have a strategic discussion about joining forces on some things between our businesses. He also said he might be interested in investing in us or in an affiliate of ours I had discussed with him. We are signing a non-disclosure agreement on Monday. The Euro-dude (who turned out to be one part Dane, one part Swede and one part Canadian, so truly a Euro-dude) turns out to be from a large wind-farming investment firm that wants to diversify into investing in companies that use electric power in stranded locations. That is the sweet spot that both the Yank and I are targeting for our businesses. He also is signing and NDA with me on Monday and doing likewise with the Yank (who’s company he already had on his screen). We all had serious interest in exploring opportunities with one another and this one gathering made the whole conference worthwhile for me all on its own. I even got points from the Yank for “introducing” the Euro-dude to him. Go figure.

I have to say, this was all because I was trying to be polite to a fellow human on an otherwise lonely pre-transit Friday night after a long and somewhat tedious conference. My summary of all this is that you never know what can come of pleasantry and you will always be repaid for your courtesy by the universe. Now if I can just get this Côte d’Ivoire guy to stop bogeying so loudly I’ll be all set.