Step away from the keypad

Harvard Business Review carried a piece this week by Daniel Gelati about multi-tasking which certainly chimed.  Of course multi-tasking is now 'de rigueur' for almost everyone these days as smartphones, tablets, laptops, even now TVs, give us the option to do more things simultaneously in one minute than our forebears did in a week.

As with all modern advances this is a mixed blessing.  Woodreed, like many other businesses I'm sure, has unleashed enormous value, tangible and intangible, for ourselves and for our clients, from enabling remote working, especially for parents juggling childcare with work commitments.  The mere introduction of two PC monitors means I can now keep even more balls in the air than I ever could before - and believe me that's a lot.

But at what price - to ourselves and those we live and work with?

Unlike our capacity for love which is not reduced in any way the more it is spread amongst those closest to us, our capacity for multi-tasking means that we are giving less and less attention, consideration and care to each task we add to the mix.  A lot of the time this doesn't matter, we can do things on the hoof and with an eye on something else, but much of the time something, or someone, has to give.

Gelati describes the '"provisional conversation": a face-to-face discussion that falls apart as one or more participants default to checking their phones, only to restart as the handsets are put away.'

How many of us have been in meetings, either with clients, prospective clients, our boss or colleagues, where one, or shockingly many more, of the participants have one eye on their iPhones or Blackberries?  Where those who are supposed to be listening to you, engaging with you, simply giving you the courtesy of the time of day, are suddenly distracted by composing a quick response to some inbound email or text which cannot be ignored?  Or worse posting on Facebook? Not only is it just damn rude to those present but tell me the quality of the response isn't undermined too and wouldn't have been better for some calm reflection at a later time?  Are we really all so, so important and so pivotal that the world will stop turning if we don't respond in a nano-second?

So isn't it time we all stood up and were counted and showed each other a little more respect?  Why is it a sign of corporate status to come to a meeting with your phone/tablet and then give it a place at the table? Is mine bigger than yours, really? Come on let's make it unacceptable to turn up at a meeting and place your smartphone on the table - turn it off and put it away. When you are in a meeting - formal or informal turn the phone off, ignore the monitor screen, step away from the keyboard.

Tell your boss if they're disrespecting you by allowing themselves to be distracted. Or suggest an alternative time/place to meet if you can't quite bring yourself to be too direct. Gelati cites the junior consultant who suggested that "moving to an empty chair on the opposite side of the room gave the senior partner space to wrap up her email and slide over to me when she was ready to talk."

Let's work out ways to put a stop to the worse aspects of this, and let's challenge our own behaviour too - because of course we are all guilty of it.

To read David's piece in full click here Harvard Business Review