Connected Lives (Part Five)

In a recent meet­ing with my col­leagues, we all sat around a con­fer­ence table, our iden­ti­cal Black­ber­ries in front of us. As one by one the Black­ber­ries chirped, clicked, chimed, and buzzed, we found our­selves laugh­ing at we looked at each other and then down at our indi­vid­ual devices, simul­ta­ne­ously declar­ing, “It’s yours” or “It’s mine.”

As the meet­ing went on, we each took our turn email­ing as the speaker con­tin­ued talk­ing, hold­ing the lit­tle sil­ver gad­gets in our laps or just under the edge of the table, typ­ing with our thumbs in a failed attempt to be unob­tru­sive and not dis­rupt the pro­ceed­ings. Every one of us was, at some point, guilty of allow­ing tech­nol­ogy to inter­rupt and com­pete with our focus upon what was being dis­cussed in that room.

I have now made it my prac­tice, when I am speak­ing to a group, to announce at the out­set that I expect cell phones and Black­ber­ries to be turned off or, at a min­i­mum, put on the “vibrate” set­ting. I ask my audi­ences not to place their devices on the table in front of them, but, rather, to store them in their bag or pocket and use them only dur­ing breaks.

For the most part, my request is ignored. It is not uncom­mon to see atten­dees going in and out of the room as I am speaking.

I have tried a num­ber of tech­niques to dis­cour­age and elim­i­nate the behav­ior. For instance, when the IPhone first hit the mar­ket, I jok­ingly told my audi­ences that, if their phone rang dur­ing my pre­sen­ta­tion, I would con­fis­cate it the way my son’s high school prin­ci­pal once col­lected his — and kept it until Fri­day after­noon. (You would have thought the world had quit spin­ning on its axis! I think I was actu­ally pun­ished, rather than my son, because I had to lis­ten to him whine and com­plain about not being able to send text mes­sages to his friends for four days.) I added, “So if you have an iIPhone, please let it ring because I’m look­ing for one. We will trade phones and I’ll thank you before you leave today.” Every­one laughed, but no one really got the message.

I’ve also stopped my pre­sen­ta­tion and waited for the offender to fin­ish his/her activ­ity, encour­ag­ing the rest of the audi­ence to join me in watch­ing him/her type. Unde­terred, their thumbs have gen­er­ally con­tin­ued fly­ing over the tiny keys until they are ready to hit “send.” When a class par­tic­i­pant gets up and leaves the room, I some­times encour­age the rest of the class to wave at them as they exit, say­ing, “Let’s all wave!” or ask­ing the per­son walk­ing out with his/her cell phone up to his/her ear, “I hope you’re not going away angry.” Gen­er­ally, they turn, wave back, laugh … and keep talk­ing as they walk out the door.

Yes, I am a frus­trated stand-up comic.

But I am also a frus­trated pub­lic speaker.

I am old enough to remem­ber life before cell phones and Black­ber­ries. I recall when busi­ness was trans­acted with­out those con­ve­nient tools. I remem­ber when a sec­re­tary would have to actu­ally get up out of his/her chair and walk to a con­fer­ence room to sum­mon his/her boss to take a tele­phone call. Bet­ter yet, I remem­ber the days when my sec­re­tary told callers, “I’m sorry, but she’s in a meet­ing. I’ll have her return your call when it con­cludes.” Peo­ple were sat­is­fied with that response. What­ever the issue was, it would wait for an hour, two hours, or even until the fol­low­ing day.

These days, sec­re­taries just send an email, know­ing that the boss will read it while in a meet­ing, class or seminar.

It seems that every issue has now been ele­vated to “urgent” sta­tus, requir­ing an imme­di­ate response. Just as our atten­tion spans have shrunken so has our abil­ity to receive responses to inquiries, address issues, and resolve con­flicts. And as the accept­able “turn-around” time has evap­o­rated, so, too, has our abil­ity to ana­lyze, pon­der, con­sider, and delib­er­ate over impor­tant mat­ters. To our detri­ment, in my opinion.

With those quick responses come off the cuff remarks, snarky replies, and split-second decision-making that all too often, we regret later, espe­cially when we real­ize that there was more infor­ma­tion to be gath­ered, more fac­tors to be taken into account, about which we were unaware when we fired off that reply email or text message.

How does all of this bode for the busi­ness and world lead­ers of tomor­row? Teenagers and even younger chil­dren are experts at text mes­sag­ing. While we Baby Boomers have had to work to become adept at typ­ing with our thumbs, and still strug­gle to remem­ber which key is for punc­tu­a­tion and which is for the num­ber key­pad, not to men­tion grasp the text lingo, our kids find it per­fectly natural.

Are we rais­ing a gen­er­a­tion of impulse buy­ers and lead­ers with atten­tion spans match­ing those of gnats? And how can we ask them to pay atten­tion in school and refrain from text mes­sag­ing and email­ing dur­ing class, using the cell phones and Black­ber­ries we pro­vide them, if we can’t refrain from the obnox­ious and rude con­duct our­selves? In other words, shouldn’t we be set­ting a bet­ter exam­ple, mod­el­ing behav­ior that will encour­age them to “do as I do,” rather than as I say?

Click here to read Part Six.

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On the Same Topic:

• Does Blog­ging Make You a Bet­ter Writer?
• The Value of a Diary
• When Did You Know You Were a Writer?
• Con­nected Lives (Part Six)
• Con­nected Lives (Part Four)