Wednesday April 29, 2009

Topic: Executive Productivity

Reference: Kneale, Klaus. “BlackBerry Tips From The Top.” Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/27/executive-blackberry-tipsleadership-ceo_print.html.

March 31, 2009.

A lot of executives have joined the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) craze and are now connected to work through a mobile device. Whether you have an iPhone, Blackberry, or other device most now carry desktop extensions with them. The trouble is that no one ever provides insight for the best way to use the device, or perhaps more importantly the things to avoid. Properly used, PDA’s can be a great productivity enhancement, improve coordination, and provide you with the freedom to get out of the office. For example, I use and enjoy the conference call feature frequently. Conversely, used inappropriately, the devices can take you away from important human interaction, get you to focus too narrowly on meaningless banter, and get you to render opinions before all relevant information has been assembled. One of the real problems that I have with the medium is that people tend to write from a top of mind orientation on PDA’s which leads to more frequent communication but with inadequate information content. In order for executives to get the most out of these devices a disciplined approach has to be adopted towards managing them. In the referenced article the commentator alludes to the same concept. “He uses e-mail filters and out-of-office settings-which can be set to respond only to certain e-mails-to automatically, prioritize. And he tries to get in a good two hours a day when he doesn’t respond to it at all.” There are clearly more optimal ways to respond to the demands of mail, scheduling, and information retrieval. Most involve using desktop email rules to rank email, push information to non-priority areas and the like. Human intervention can overtake all of these. If you are constantly answering short emails, visiting Facebook or Twitter, or looking at video when are you doing business development, strategic thinking, or mentoring? How are you improving your communication skills if you only communicate through the PDA vortex?  All I know is that if you attend a business conference, networking function, or industry presentation, you can hardly get into a conversation anymore because of PDA addiction. This is hardly productive. As a result, there are a few simple rules that have to be followed for more effective PDA use: (1) Block out times when you are not going to be available and communicate that widely throughout your staff; (2) Keep your device in the holster during all interactive meetings; (3) Use your device to push thought provoking information, vocabulary, or training to your attention; and (4) Queue up messages on a subject until all relevant facts have been highlighted. Let me know what steps you are using to manage your PDA vortex.

Comments

Add New Search

Write comment
Name:
Email:	do not notifynotify
Title:
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.23

3.23 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."