Two days is how long?

I'm working in Helsinki this week. It's a two-day follow-up on a sales skills programme I delivered in August last year and I've been given all of Monday and Tuesday to work with the team.

This begs what may seem like a stupid question: -

How long is two days?

When designing a programme I usually work to a schedule of 830am to 530pm: 7 hours of work + 1 hour for lunch + 2 x 30 minutes for coffee. So a two-day programme should mean that I roughly have 13 hours to work with (I allow 30 minutes a day for latecomers, birthday cakes, senior managers dropping in to 'say a few words' and participants mysteriously booked out on earlier flights).

I get nervous when my usable time drops much below 6 hours / day. Not only is it harder to deliver financial value (I charge a day-rate) but also my programmes are like stories that take a while to tell and aren't helped by rushing. At a pinch I can take you on a 13 hour journey in 11 hours.

So when my Finnish client blithely told me that we'd be starting at 9am and finishing at 430pm I got worried, especially as her team has no real culture of punctuality. And although there's a temptation to finish later on Monday and start earlier on Tuesday I have to account for the fact that some participants got up long before 5am in a Nordic mid-winter to make it for the 9am start. My ability to deliver value drops to zero if my audience is weeping with exhaustion.

To address this I've shortened the programme, truncating some exercises and dropping others altogether. Now the problem is that I'm not delivering the product I sold in. As my client is the National Sales Manager I know that in her mind this programme equates to her team being 'off the road' for two whole days not some fraction thereof.

The same person is simultaneously taking away my hours and demanding I give her days!

Is there a solution? Maybe not a comprehensive one but the following are perhaps worth remembering: -

• Avoid Monday meetings. Many companies have a very sensible policy of not expecting staff to cut their weekend short and so a Monday meeting usually means early morning travel and a later start time

• The same goes for Friday afternoon finishes
  

• I don't kid myself that I'll make up all that much time with shortened breaks. Maybe I can get away with a 45 minute lunch break and 20 minutes for coffee but any less than that and my participants won't have time to get something to eat, use the bathroom and return those urgent calls. When every scheduled fifteen minute break legitimately takes twenty minutes I really look like I've lost control
  

• In as friendly a manner as possible I'm less tolerant of discussions going 'off-topic'. Save it for the breaks please

• Finally, I commit to delivering 7.5 hours of value regardless of the actual time I end up with

As I've said before, I don't think there's a lot of point complaining to the client to subtly lower expectations. In six weeks time all that anyone will remember is that the team was off the road for two days and what to what end?