Creative Class

At least, ban their use in meetings suggests a Forbes article this week.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. To avoid wasting time in meetings, hardcore multitaskers sit there with their faces glued to their BlackBerrys, reading e-mails while they follow the discussion with one ear. But all they are doing is making the meeting longer for everyone else.

“Being busy and being productive are not the same,” says Denise Landers, a time-management consultant based in Houston. “I definitely believe that banning BlackBerrys from a conference room would lead to shorter and more effective meetings. We simply cannot multitask and perform at 100%.”

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Another recent study, this one by the University of Texas at Austin, offers hope. Titled “The Social Influences of Electronic Multitasking in Organizational Meetings,” this report concludes that people don’t multitask because they have to; they multitask simply because they can. They see other people reading e-mail during meetings, so they do it too. But if the office culture discourages multitasking during meetings, they will stop, and focus on the issue at hand.

Even deeply ingrained habits are subject to change over time, Crenshaw notes. As every fan of Mad Men knows, smokers once routinely lit up during meetings. Now they don’t. The same thing can happen to multitasking.

“I view myself as an evangelist,” he says. “It’s going to take probably another decade of talking about this before people get the message.”

Does your workplace have a Blackberry policy? Do you?

Where I work people rarely if ever use a Blackberry while in a meeting, unless to look something up or to take a quick glance to ensure no emergencies have arisen (a few colleagues need to be available 24/7 to put out virtual “fires”). If the senior people and mentors follow this policy, it seems others stay in line.

Social media, communications technologies, and more flexible workplace attitudes have been driving changes to the way we view our personal and professional lives.

A recent Knowledge at Wharton article examines the evolving etiquette as well as challenges surrounding the rise of mobile technologies, such as the Blackberry, as well as social media websites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

As Facebook, Twitter and 24-hour Blackberry access blur the lines between business and personal lives, managers and employees are struggling to develop new social norms to guide them through the ongoing evolution of communications technology. Wharton faculty and other experts say the process of creating rules to cope with the ever-expanding reach of modern communications has just begun, but will be shaped largely by individuals and organizations, not top-down decrees from a digital Emily Post. Generational differences in the approach to openness on the Internet will also be a factor in coming to common understandings of how and when it is appropriate to contact colleagues, superiors or clients.

The article then details some dilemmas – where do you stand?

1.  First, is there a time when “work” should stop and “personal life” should take over?  From the Wharton article:

For example, a Blackberry can allow parents to attend their childrens’ soccer games while remaining in contact with colleagues at the office in case an emergency comes up. But, [Nancy Rothbard] adds, “you have your Blackberry at your kid’s soccer game. That’s another … line you may be crossing.”

2.  Is it healthy to blur your personal self and professional self ?

…says Wharton marketing professor Patricia Williams, “There is the self we are for our friends, a self for our family [and] a professional self. What’s interesting is the degree to which we are comfortable playing all of those ’selves’ at one time.”

“I’ve heard people say that Facebook is for personal friends and LinkedIn is for professional contacts,” Williams notes. “But many of my Facebook friends are my colleagues – people who work just down the hall – and I don’t have a problem with that. I do, however, have some discomfort being ‘Facebook friends’ with my students, because it gives them access to my personal self that’s not normally available to them.”

3. Are younger people, today’s children up through college students, growing up with no separation between these different “selves”?  And what will this mean for the way we work?

Typically, business norms evolve through official policy disseminated by organizations and by “reality” that bubbles up from the organization’s grassroots. [Wharton Professor Monica McGrath] asks “The question is: How accessible do you want to be? [Today,] young people want to be very accessible, and in an international corporation you are expected to be available [around the clock]. Time zones mean nothing. The norms will continue to develop based upon generational leadership.”

To sum up, I expect that the line between personal and professional will become increasingly blurred. First, knowledge work is highly collaborative and it’s hard to work with people who you don’t like – therefore, people will forge friends through collaboration at work. Second, younger generations will have grown up with limited separation between their different personas.

How do mobile and social media technologies enhance or detract from your personal and professional life?

Technology has enabled the newer mobile, flexible workplace that allows for better collaboration, faster decisions, and higher productivity.

The White House, as well as the U.S. government generally, over the past 8+ years has demonstrated an increasing performance deficit in these areas of collaboration, decision speed, and productivity, particularly when compared to private corporations, who have embraced new technologies and new workplaces.

Consider these three examples: FEMA’s inability to manage the crisis in New Orleans; the CIA and FBI and other agencies not being ready on September 11, 2001; and the clumsy response to the current economic challenges. Inquiries and reports related to these examples have revealed that various key people and agencies have lacked access to timely information or have been unable to collaborate quickly.

Then consider comparable private sector capacity: Wal-Mart is a world leader in logistics, infinitely superior to either FEMA or the military and indeed did end up helping out with post-Katrina needs. Within the Google servers is probably more information about what potential terrorists are up to than at the FBI or CIA.

For U.S. government agencies to catch up even modestly to the productivity and innovation capacity, a new approach to workplaces is likely needed.

It could start at the top. I would suspect that few Presidents of major, successful corporations don’t have a Blackberry or the equivalent.  Anyone who wants to have a laptop with high speed Internet access on their desk can have it. Denying this to Obama seems ridiculous –and if the President cannot decide this for himself, exactly who is in charge of the USA?

Security is a huge issue at every big company; this therefore does not seem like a good reason to tell Barack Obama he can’t have a Blackberry.  The White House should be able to employ top IT people to put in appropriate security measures.

One argument I’ve heard as to why he shouldn’t have one is that all of his correspondence becomes public record. But what does that have to do with the Blackberry?  In 2008, considerable official correspondence between all types of companies and organizations happens in e-mails. This is just 21st century workplace reality - the Office of the President needs to catch up. (I’m sure Obama knows what should and should not be said in e-mail messages!)  And, he could always decide to read only.

Electronic communication is a key part of dynamic workplaces today that enable better collaboration and higher productivity. It was key to how Obama mobilized a nation to become President-elect.  I would think that it will be key in the new White House — but it will be interesting to see what the Obama team decides to do.