Doug Cartland's Four-Minute Leadership Advisory
Phones II 
 Doug Cartland
Doug Cartland, Inc.
02/23/2016

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Lots of responses to my article last week on phone etiquette.
Lots of great thoughts, too. One intriguing theory about our smart phones and our rudeness with them, came to me from John Nowak in Texas:
"Some folks appear to have become addicted to this technology," he writes.  "Like an addict, folks need their 'fix' at the expense of all else.  Hmmm...maybe this is where manners/courtesy start to fall by the wayside."
This was interesting to me.
I've often thought that our attachment to technology could be considered a bit of an addiction. And I've derided the disrespectful behavior the use of technology can prompt, thus my article last week. But I'm not sure I ever closed the circle by saying that our behavior--ignoring manners and courtesy--may come from the insatiable appetite we've developed for ready-at-hand technology over the past two decades.
We're not rude because we're rude, we're rude because we're compulsive.
How might this be significant for business? Excellent question. Let's forget manners for a second. Let's talk about productivity lost by this addiction to technology.
The average professional glances at their email about 30 times per hour. Do you know that glance costs him or her on average one minute each time? That's not reading an email and answering it. It's, in a matter of seconds, diverting your eyes from what they are presently focused on, catching who the sender was, checking out a subject line and possibly snatching a feel of the email to get the gist.
And then refocusing on the work you were doing before your glance. One minute gone.
That means on average about 30 minutes every hour disappears with no appreciable work value. That means potentially half of our workday is sausaged up. We may be at the office for eight hours but might be getting only four hours of work done!
Pay attention CEOs.
Thus I try to convince business professionals to set up in their calendars email times during the day. Maybe four of them. Fifteen to twenty minutes set aside every two to three hours solely for reading and responding to email. That means completely ignoring email between those calendared times.
Do you know the looks I get when I suggest that? Do you know how difficult it has been for individuals to implement it?
And yet there is nary an email that can't wait two hours to be answered.
My son put in a new computer for me last spring. The first thing I asked him to do was remove all "pings," "bongs" and flags telling me there's a new email. My phone notifies me of a new text, but not of new emails.
I will check emails when I want to check emails. I own them, they do not own me.
Yeah, everybody's job is different and some need email more than others. Trust me, however, some integration of this discipline can work for everybody in some way. I've seen it and experienced it.
Here's another one for the work place:
If we're not at all addicted to our technology then why do I have leaders look at me perplexed and helpless when I talk about how to run a successful meeting?
They ask: "Well, what do I do about the phones?"
"What about them?" I ask.
"Well, they have them on in my meetings and their checking them 'n stuff."
"Well," my intensity rising ever so slightly, "tell them the phones aren't allowed! Turn them off! Put them away!"
"Oh," they say as if it were a brand new thought.
If I've invited you to be in my meeting then I have a reason for you to be there and it's not to be distracted by your technology.
There is a time and place for technology, of course. I'm a fan of the information and convenience it has put at our fingertips.
But when it comes to our compulsive dependence on it that causes a lack of manners and loss of productivity, it might be instructive to listen to the often derided Nancy Reagan and her overly simplistic anti-drug catchphrase of the 1980s.

Just say no.
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Sincerely,  

Doug

 

Doug Cartland, President
Doug Cartland, Inc.

 

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