Trend Alert: Meetings Go “Topless” in Silicon Valley. Should Your Company Follow Suit?
March 31st, 2008 Oliver StarrCategories | Best Practices | Getting Things Done | Training
Nothing demonstrates lack of respect to an employee like ignoring one when you’re with them, yet that’s exactly what many people do thanks to the “continuous partial attention” caused by being plugged in while in a meeting. If you’ve ever had someone lose track of the discussion because they were simultaneously chatting on their laptop, or felt like your meeting had gone off track as people checked their Crackberry or sms’d someone from an iPhone not so cleverly concealed beneath the table, then perhaps you could benefit from going “topless”, too.
The LA Times is reporting that several Silicon Valley companies have taken the extraordinary step of banning the very technology they created from meetings; making laptops, iPhones, Blackberry devices and the like off limis during meetings. If you find yourself paying only half a mind to what’s being said by your colleagues while the other half is checking eBay or if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a “Facebook fade-out” then this trend may just be one you’re ready to adopt early.
If the meeting is important to you, and you’re important to the meeting, prove it by going topless. Otherwise, man up and say no to the meeting. For the inevitable objections from those who claim they can give quality attention to the meeting while getting their Crackberry fix, I have one question: Would it be okay with you if your urologist answered a few emails during your vasectomy?
The biggest productivity hit on the planet is to have the meeting attendees reading their Crackberrys or looking at their laptops.
Be there or not, but choose.
It really makes me want to throw things at them…
If you’re going to be in the meeting, be IN the meeting. Even those that say they are taking notes usually are not just doing that. If that were true, they’d go offline completely and only have a Word doc open to take notes.
Coincidentally, there’s a new CS Monitor article which mentions the illusion of multitasking.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0402/p13s02-lign.html
The article also mentions GTD as an antidote to “thrashing,” the condition where the computer, or the human, is keeping things on its mind that impair efficiency.
Personally, when the other person shifts to his/her blackberry, laptop, what ever, I don’t stop speaking. But, I do interject a pause, and then say something such as, “Well, just make sure you have it to me by this time tomorrow” or “I had no idea you would make that kind of commitment…” and it usually gets their attention and sends the right message.