Serendipity and Coffee Meetings

The other day I was scrolling through LinkedIn and came across a post that caught my attention. Someone was making the familiar point that they were incredibly busy. That is hardly unusual in itself, but what struck me was the way they expanded on the idea. They explained that they regularly receive invitations to catch up with people over coffee, but they decline because their time is far too valuable. Reading that, I found myself shaking my head. My own experience has been the opposite. I have never walked away from a coffee catch-up without learning something, or at the very least discovering a quirky detail about a person or situation that made the meeting worthwhile. To me, serendipity is one of life’s underrated treasures.

That memory returned to me recently when I received an email postponing a meeting for the sixth time. Not the first time, not even the third time, but the sixth. By that point, I was less than charitable. The meeting in question was not particularly complicated. I had offered to share some of my experience around a difficult technology problem an organisation was facing. There was no fee, no agenda beyond trying to be helpful. But after half a dozen cancellations, I felt the urge to point out the obvious. I replied, as politely as I could manage under the circumstances, that while I understood the individual was busy, clearly meeting me was not enough of a priority to justify their time. Which is fine, but surely it could have been made clear much earlier.

It may well be that I was overestimating my usefulness. After twenty years immersed in technology and having seen large organisations grapple with very similar issues, I thought I might have some useful perspective to offer. But perhaps I was wrong, and my supposed insights were no more valuable than war stories from the trenches. I can accept that possibility. What bothers me more is not whether I had the right answers, but whether the interaction demonstrated basic respect.

Corporate life is undeniably hectic. People are pulled in every direction by shifting priorities, urgent demands, and unexpected crises. I have no doubt that those pressures are real. I also know that the current climate is even more volatile than usual, and that managers are carrying extra weight on their shoulders. But being under pressure does not absolve us of the need to treat others with respect. If anything, it makes respect more important. It is the oil that keeps the machinery of human interaction from grinding to a halt.

Respect, after all, does not have to be dramatic. It can be as simple as being upfront. If you know a meeting is unlikely to happen, saying so saves everyone’s time. If you genuinely want the meeting but cannot fit it in, then perhaps one postponement, or even two, makes sense. But once you are on your sixth reschedule, it stops being a question of scheduling and starts looking like disregard.

The thing that gnawed at me most was not that my time was wasted, nor even that I might have had something useful to contribute and did not get the chance. What frustrated me was that the willingness to give freely of my time and knowledge was met with a kind of half-hearted deferral, again and again. That was harder to swallow than a straightforward no. In fact, an outright rejection would have been preferable. At least then I would know where I stood, and could move on to the next serendipitous conversation.

I sometimes wonder whether, in the race to maximise efficiency, we have lost sight of the small courtesies that make work not only bearable but rewarding. The irony is that the people who guard their schedules most fiercely are often the ones missing out on those moments of unexpected connection. Some of the most valuable conversations I have had took place in unremarkable cafés, with no agenda and no plan. A chat that started with small talk about the weather ended up leading to a collaboration, or an insight, or a friendship that I never could have engineered. Those moments cannot be forecast in a spreadsheet, but they often end up being more useful than any carefully orchestrated strategy session.

Which takes me back to that original LinkedIn post. The person who dismissed coffee meetings as a poor use of their valuable time might well be achieving efficiency. But efficiency is not the same as connection. And it is the connection that drives the best outcomes, whether in business or in life. It does not happen in fifteen-minute blocks shuffled endlessly around a calendar. It happens when two people choose to sit down, share, and listen, without rushing off to the next thing.

So yes, I may have been sharper in my reply after that sixth postponement than I should have been. Perhaps frustration got the better of me. But my hope is that my reaction was less about my own bruised ego and more about a reminder that respect still matters, and that serendipity is worth making room for. Because in my experience, the richest moments do not come when everything is perfectly planned. They come when you take the time, however inconvenient, to give someone your full attention.