Too Connected For Our Own Good?
Around the world, we’re all becoming ‘connected’ 24 hours a day. We’re tweeting, texting, emailing, Facebooking, and generally accessing and accessible from the moment we wake up (sometimes even moments before), until after we’ve switched off the light and are about to drift off to sleep in bed. China has 500million internet users; Brazil had 210 million mobile phone subscribers in August 2011, for a population of 195 million people; almost 300 billion emails are sent every day worldwide (although 90% of these are SPAM which we need to filter in order to get to the ‘real stuff’).
Research by German IT association Bitkom found that 88% of German workers are reachable for clients, colleagues and bosses outside business hours, compared with 73% only two years ago.
On the one hand, we can’t remember how we survived before we had all this connectivity and information at our fingertips. But on the other hand, we’re struggling more than ever to put boundaries on our activities and just ‘be present’ with our family, friends, and even our work tasks. Whilst a degree of multi-tasking is a necessary human function, we struggle to perform to peak efficiency during our ‘normal work hours’, and then continue to have work bearing down on us in the evenings and on weekends when we should be relaxing and recharging.
Neuroscientists like Dr. Gary Small are confirming what we probably sub-consciously already know – multitaskers make more errors than people who focus on one task at a time.
Many of us escalate from multitasking to partial continuous attention: we’re constantly scanning the environment for the next exciting bit of information — the next text message, IM, email, or even land-line phone call. That next ping or buzz or ring interrupts our focus and charges up the dopamine reward system as we anticipate something new and more exciting than the task at hand.
When paying partial continuous attention, people may place their brains in a heightened state of stress. They no longer have time to reflect, contemplate or make thoughtful decisions. Instead, they exist in a state of constant tension — on alert for a new contact or item of news or information at any moment. And, once people get used to it, they tend to thrive on the perpetual connectivity. It becomes irresistible.
If we’re going to perform to our best, we’ve got to seriously reconsider the ways in which we work (and play). We need, as the new 21st century phenomena has come to be known, a digital detox. At work, we need to get serious about focussing on the task at hand.
- Create a list of tasks to work on today, and work your way through that list, only allowing yourself some preset times to attend to emails and other potentially distracting tasks.
- Turn off your email notifications so they don’t pop up while you’re working
- Switch off your iPhone, Blackberry, or HTC while you’re in the office, or at the very least while you’re working on your tasks. If you insist on just putting it into ‘silent’ mode, then place it in a drawer where you can’t see notifications popping up on the screen
- If you’re heading out for lunch or a coffee break, try leaving your phone behind. Chat to a friend/colleague instead, or enjoy the time out to read the newspaper, a book, or just ‘people watch’.
But just as significantly, we also need to reclaim our ‘personal’ time and make the most of that, enjoying the opportunity to socialise, relax, and not have to be constantly ‘switched on’.
In Brazil, new legislation was approved by President Rousseff last month deeming work emails sent and received outside business hours as ‘overtime’. Clearly workers had reached the point of saturation and were no longer happy to receive emails day and night without being compensated for being constantly ‘on duty’. Although the legislation doesn’t directly restrict the amount of after-hours communication, it should give employers good reason to reconsider sending emails if they’re going to incur additional overtime costs.
Automobile manufacturer Volkswagen has agreed with their employee’s labour representatives to limit emails to between 1/2 hour before the commencement of work until 1/2 hour after the end of their shift (Reuters). Whilst executives and mission-critical staff have been exempted, it’s clearly a significant step towards reclaiming a bit of work/life balance.
Numerous other examples of digital overload both during and after work hours are emerging:
- German consumer goods manufacturer Henkel imposed a ‘Blackberry-free week’ for the management board between Christmas and New Year (to be broken only in the case of an emergency)
- Telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom introduced a “Smart Device Policy” encouraging employees to claim communication-free time when they are off work, and promised in exchange not to expect them to read emails or answer their phones during those blackout times
- Multi-national IT services firm Atos plans to eliminate email entirely by 2013, with their CEO Thierry Breton describing emails as “an instrument to shirk responsibility” – the shift is already on to use Instant Messaging and Facebook-style internal systems which allow project teams to collaborate and communicate by posting on socially-enabled intranet web pages
- The Saudi Government has touted the idea of a complete ban on smart phone devices for Government employees during business hours (the concern being that staff were receiving too many non-work related interruptions which were impacting the quality of service they’re delivering. Although this idea may not be ideal, and has a lot of opposition, it nonetheless highlights the substantial number of distractions workers are confronted with every day
We’re clearly struggling to find a sustainable balance in the way we use all of our gadgets and technology. What do you think? I’d love to hear your comments, suggestions and anecdotes!
Are your ideas ‘good’ or ‘bad’?
I was recently re-reading another great book from Edward de Bono, “New Thinking for the New Millennium”, which was published in 1999 and is clearly as just as applicable today as it was 12 years ago. Human nature being what it is, we have a tendency to get lazy in our thinking and, for expediency, process many of our decisions on auto-pilot.
If we want to really make progress in our businesses, and in society generally, we need to take time to think constructively and with genuine creativity. This involves challenging other people’s thinking, and allowing them to challenge ours.
Money is a token of exchange. In the past a fisherman might exchange fish for grain from a farmer. A brothel lady in Nevada could be paid with a chicken. Money was more convenient. You were paid in money and you could then busy something with the money. In the same way there are certain ‘value words’, which act as tokens of value. Instead of having to explain why something will not work or having to show that something might indeed work, you use simple words like ‘good’ and ‘bad’: ‘That is a bad idea’; ‘That is a good idea.’ ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ are token words which are accepted as indicating value. Just as a person with too much money can become a spendthrift, so the very existence of these value words means they can be applied rather too easily. They can be applied without any need for justification. It is only if the labels are challenged that justification may be demanded. The immense ease of this sort of judgement makes thinking unnecessary and the outcomes very poor. The applied judgements are just as easily based on emotions as on logic.”
- Edward de Bono (New Thinking for the New Millennium)
Often, the dynamics of corporate life discourage team members from challenging the accepted wisdom or requesting justification. If the boss dismisses something as a ‘bad’ idea, that’s normally as far as it goes. Companies need to be able to get on with the day-to-day job of delivering value to their customers, and repeatedly doing what they know works well (this is known as process, procedure, “best practice”) – so it’s untenable to have staff challenging every decision that’s made.
But could this mean we fall into the trap of stifling real progress? What could we be doing to nurture and reward thinking processes which will challenge the status quo and trigger genuine innovation and creativity?
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Have you been inadvertently seduced into the ‘we need more of this good thing’ mindset? Whether in marketing, business more broadly, family life, friendships, or business, corporate, and national finances, it’s common place (and entirely natural) for us to think that if something is ‘good’ and it’s been beneficial for us thus far, then we want more of this good thing.
If something is good, then surely more of it is better? Once we have applied the judgement value of ‘good’, then that thing is good – and we want good things. Once something is placed in the ‘good-to-have’ box then we want more and more. Yet there are so many instances where this is simply not true. Food without any salt tastes bad. Some salt is good. Too much salt is again bad.
I sometimes call this the salt curve. No communication is bad. More communication is good. Surely, more and more communication can only be better? The average American manager gets 178 e-mail messages every day. Because email is so easy, you automatically send the same message to everyone on your list. It is possible to be overwhelmed and burdened by too much communication. Free movement of money and goods is the opposite of protectionism and is good for trade. But the unrestricted adoration of ‘globalism’ may not be an unmixed blessing. Money surges around the world in search of immediate gain and at the expense of sustained productivity. Water in a basin flops about. Put a grid in the basin and the giant flops are reduced to tiny flops in each square of the grid. Freedom is good and more and more freedom is better. But at a certain point freedom becomes licence and your freedom interferes with the freedom of others. This is another of the major faults of the crude judgement system. It is easy to acknowledge this fault intellectually, but much more difficult to deal with it in practice. At what precise point does the striving towards ‘more of a good thing’ turn into a ‘bad thing’? Each next step must surely be good – even if the overall picture suggests that the ultimate effect is not good?
- Edward de Bono (New Thinking for a New Millennium)
I can think of quite a few situations in which we’re chasing after “too much of a good thing”. I’d love to hear your comments on this topic!
Computer glitch leads to supermarket free-for-all
Supermarket owner Glenn Miller is feeling a bit foolish at the moment. His Pak ‘N Save supermarket in Hamilton, NZ, unlocked itself at 8am on Good Friday with not a staff member in sight!
I found this news report to be a fascinating case study in human nature. But whilst chuckling from a safe distance about such a whacky scenario (after all, it wasn’t MY stock at risk!) I couldn’t help but wonder how anybody originally designed the security of a supermarket to unlock itself without any confirmation of staff being present. Clearly an adequate risk assessment was not conducted.
Technology presents wonderful opportunities for us, and (usually) makes life so much easier. But sometimes we forget our own value in the equation.
Unlocking a building is one example. Another is in our interactions with customers. And a chef would no doubt tell you that the personal TLC that goes into cooking could never be entirely replaced by a machine. In business, as in personal life, it’s important to balance the benefits of technological innovation, with the emotional benefits, relational opportunities, and practicalities of maintaining a human touch.
This is never more true than in marketing, where we seem to think that the internet, email, web sites, and technology can progressively eliminate the need for us to personally interact with our target audience. If we’re really going to address our customers wants and needs, we need to leverage our technical tools to maximum effect, but keep it in check with a healthy dose of human interaction.
Designing a Way Forward
The human brain and our society are programmed to build upon our pre-established building blocks. This is very helpful, because we don’t have time to reinvent the wheel for every action or task we’re required to undertake. But it also means we tend not to think creatively and look at the bigger picture.
We map out where we want to go, plan the execution, and progress according to our plan. But when we encounter unforeseen circumstances, how flexible is our thinking in response to this ‘problem’?
In the Philippines they had built a huge hall to house an international film festival. Two days before the event there was a typhoon and the hall was flooded to a depth of about three feet. The engineers said it would take several days to pump the water out. So they got hundreds of workmen to build a platform over the water. The meeting took place with the water underneath the delegates. This sort of approach may too easily be condemned as ‘papering over the cracks’. In some instances this would indeed be the case and is not to be recommended; find the cause of the cracks or the house may fall down. In other instances, designing a way forward is not only valuable, it is the only way forward.
- Edward de Bono (New Thinking for the New Millennium)
In business and society today, we need to learn how to ‘design a way forward’ – accept the obstacles and faults around us and assess whether we need to ‘fix the faults’, ‘design a way forward’, or perhaps do both in parallel. Only with such progressive, constructive thinking will we maximise possibilities, productivity, and quality of life.
