This is one of those knee jerk reaction posts. Two things happened in the past few days. I attended a conference. I was sitting toward the back of the room, there were about 100 people arrayed around tables watching the speaker. The speaker was a noted expert in the subject area. People had paid a lot of money just to hear that speaker (over $1K). As I looked around the audience, few eyes were on the speaker. Most eyes were cast downward, at their devices. Whether it was a mobile, tablet, laptop, they focused on their devices. Every once in a while, they would look up, for a moment, listen to the speaker, but within a few seconds, their attention returned to their devices.
Another, was a meeting with a client. I couldn’t attend, in person, so I participated remotely. There were about 10 relatively senior people in the meeting. It was focused on an important change initiative. The presenter was presenting the implementation plan, the goals, challenges they might face, support they needed. I had been working with this organization for weeks in identifying the need for the change and in helping them develop the program. This meeting was the final decision and agreement to go forward.
I had an unusual perspective for the meeting. The camera perspective enabled me to see the people sitting at the table, as opposed to Zoom, where you look at individual faces. I could look at the conference table, the presenter and the other participants.
As you might guess, I watched where their eyes were directed. You guessed it, not at the speaker, but instead on their devices. I could detect a lot of below the table “thumb” movement, and see people busy on their keyboards.
This was an important initiative, there were some real challenges with the project, the participants had important roles in the program.
We’ve all experience this. We sit in meetings, no one is paying attention. They might look up from their devices for a few seconds, then they turn the attention to their devices. We are, too often, guilty of doing the same thing.
We’ve been too influenced by the concept of “multitasking.” We have important work to get done, yet we aren’t participating in the important work of the meeting in which we are sitting.
It’s not wonder we get so little done, despite our calendars being filled with meetings. We aren’t paying attention!
I don’t need to lecture you on this. I don’t need to cite mounds of data around distraction, multitasking, and so forth.
We Already Know All Of This!
Then the irony comes in. Despite knowing this, we don’t pay attention…… We are distracted.
I’ll stop here. We know what we should do individually. As leaders, we know what we should to with the team/group.
Imagine, how much we might accomplish!
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