You can generalize this pretty easily by understanding what is important and what isn't. It doesn't matter how creative or deep you think your regular work is. If it is very important that this person gets to the meeting and you have been tasked with making that happen, then you should be behaving like in the second example regardless. If it's important they be there and you have other work with higher priority and you think you can't do both, then you should immediately communicate that and have the responsibility of getting through to the other person reassigned. If it's not important this person come, then everyone should be fine with a message and if they make it they make it but everyone should know that upfront.
