
The Boss Who Banned Phones, and What Came Next - cohaagen
https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-you-handle-it-bosses-ban-cellphones-from-meetings-1526470250
======
TheFirstUnicorn
"Now, he tells his 40 employees not to attend meetings unless they really have
to be there and strongly advises they fully engage." There's the issue. You're
running bad meetings with a massive deck full of terrible slides with half the
company in attendance. Of course you're getting tuned out. 20 minute meetings
with no slides and 1-2 topics about which decisions need to be made by all in
attendance, and you're done.

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RLN
"Mr. Hoopes put his convictions into practice at group gatherings when he took
over a team of about 25 people at the aerospace defense company three years
ago. “Every time someone’s phone went off, they had to stand for the rest of
the meeting,” he says."

That sounds very unprofessional, it's like a punishment a teacher would give
out. I'm not even sure how I'd react to being told to do that but I think it's
unlikely I would be staying in the meeting.

~~~
rosser
But it's not unprofessional to walk into a meeting, where the combined pay of
everyone present is being spent for the purpose of discussing whatever's on
the agenda, and have your phone going off — let alone answering it —
distracting the group from that stated purpose?

Really? _Your_ call is important enough to waste the time of everyone else in
the room?

~~~
learc83
There are professional ways to deal with unprofessional behavior.

Something like talking to the employee after the meeting. Some of us don't
like being treated like children when we make a small mistake.

~~~
rosser
I really wonder at the intersection between the sets "people who find this
manager's behavior unprofessional" and "people who idolize Steve Jobs".

My intuition is, it's substantial.

------
newscracker
It seems like having secretaries or assistants has become a luxury over time,
and is gone for many people. If companies would have them, and the employees
give those numbers for emergencies as well as client calls, then it would
provide a barrier that could potentially address routine calls that need a
call back (or not) vs. emergency calls that need urgent attention. That would
seem courteous to those who call as well, having someone talk to them and tell
them that their message would be conveyed.

With smartphones, the option available is to have everyone put their phones on
Do Not Disturb mode (hopefully that's available for everyone) and keep all the
phones in silent/vibrate mode in a corner in the meeting room. On IOS, further
configuration is possible for favorite contacts and repeated calls to get
through. But this solution is still grossly inadequate by itself.

------
tedivm
> At work, Mr. Lee persuaded his team of eight to download the app and post
> their daily phone hours on a whiteboard. The team member with the lowest
> time gets bragging rights.

> “We’re thinking of having a trophy we can pass around—or maybe just shaming
> the loser,” he says.

I'm kind of disappointed in Docker over this one.

------
Sytten
[Unrelated to the topic] Not sure if HN should allow articles that are behind
a pay wall like WSJ. Thought?

~~~
expiredtofu
It is a bit annoying, but you can click the "web" link right underneath the
title, which sends you to a google search of the title [1]. Clicking the WSJ
result gives you a paywall bypass.

[1][https://www.google.com/search?q=The%20Boss%20Who%20Banned%20...](https://www.google.com/search?q=The%20Boss%20Who%20Banned%20Phones%2C%20and%20What%20Came%20Next)

~~~
Sytten
Not working for me, but maybe depends on the country of the request?

~~~
mdip
I believe this happens if you've already visited a link to the article (that's
what happened to me). Try opening a private browser session, paste in the
google link and click through to the article and it should bypass correctly
(it worked for me!) :)

------
orastor
Nice clickbait title

~~~
excitom
You won't believe what happened next!

Cell phone companies hate him.

------
mdip
I've got a couple of thoughts on this -- it's one of my pet peeves, as
well[0]. The first point is, and I get that this doesn't apply evenly
depending on the kind of job that you have, but if you dislike a company
policy ... find a new company. Particularly in software engineering, there's
just not a lot of excuses for hanging around at a place that you're unhappy
at. This isn't saying "don't like it, tough!" ... I find most people stick
around at a job they hate out of fear or other false reasons ... it's "don't
like it? Find a place that values you and shares your values". That said:

\- I'll toss out a $10 bet that the same "don't ignore me by putting your nose
in your phone during a meeting I'm running" applies to "don't ignore me when
you're home, enjoying dinner with your family, and I send you a text/e-mail".
A policy that forbids phone use while in the office, if matched with a policy
that forbids responding/checking e-mail while at out of the office[1]/on non-
work time, is a lot more palatable. My _big rule_ \-- and the _one thing_ that
has been the deciding factor of whether or not I would take a job or whether
or not I would quit working where I was at is the answer to the question "Do
they give me the tools and the freedom to do my job in a way that is
sufficiently efficient and does not hinder me?" Generally speaking, companies
with a lot of these kinds of "edicts" like "phones in meetings are prohibited"
don't score highly in answering that question.

\- Responding to people being distracted by their phones in meetings with "Bad
the Phones" is text-book example of treating the symptom of the problem rather
than identifying the problem. Speaking from personal experience and from
anecdotes from coworkers over the years, the problem is the meeting itself.
I'm not an advocate of tossing chairs out of the meeting rooms, banning
meetings[3] all together nor am I generally of the opinion that _most_
meetings are bad. The problem is that _most_ of the individuals invited to a
meeting _are not needed_ , they _know_ they're not needed, and they've got
_other_ things that they _are_ needed for. In a lot of cases, these are the
guys who are brought in because they're an SME on some corner of a project and
their input will be needed for 5 of the allocated 55 minutes[4]. Get the
answers you need from minor contributors through Slack (heck, you can even
_schedule_ them as a Slack participant so that they know to be near their PC
in case a question pops up) or e-mail and stop inviting them to spend an hour
at what amounts to "a different desk". It sounds like the company in question
came to the right conclusion in the end -- stop going to meetings you don't
need to be a part of.

\- Somewhat unrelated, but I rolled my eyes a little at "I firmly believe that
multitasking is a myth". While I'd agree that there are far more people who
believe that they are "super-taskers" and are not, I have met two super-
taskers in my short time on this earth and several competent multi-taskers.
One is my wife, who could literally repeat back to me word for word the last 6
sentences I spoke with more accuracy than I could, all while continuing to
follow the plot-line of a book she's reading and the other is a former boss of
mine who I've never seen drive his car _without_ holding a conversation via
text and as many times as I had driven with him I had _never_ felt unsafe. I'm
not terribly surprised that the quotation was from a man (not meant to
denigrate the individual) -- I've read that multi-tasking traits are less
prevalent in men and, incidentally, I have yet to meet any male who can even
slightly multi-task effectively _except_ for my former boss (who wasn't just
an exception to the rule, but a _glaringly large_ exception). However, of the
women in my life and in my past, _all_ of them surpassed my multi-tasking
abilities and easily half of them, I'd estimate, were quite good at it.

 _All of that said_ , there _is_ a form of etiquette that I think is failing
to be observed by a lot of us. Part of that needs to be established with
direct communication. At the place that I work, when we have "all staff"
meetings (which are the ones you really _want_ to be dorking around on your
phone), the owner asks us to give him and the others who are going to speak
the time, without phones. No need to send out a passive-aggressive e-mail,
just simply stated "Please pay attention, there's important stuff here" and he
follows it up with "Thanks, everyone, for keeping your phones out of your
hands" when it's over (and the rule _is_ observed where I'm at). When I know
I'm "the guy who they need for 5m in a 55m meeting", I say -- before or right
at the start of the meeting -- "I'm a little back-logged and since you only
need me for that part, I'm going to sit quietly here and get some other things
done -- if I'm called on and I don't look up, feel free to throw something at
me." I try to make sure the organizer knows in advance when I _have_ to be
distracted so that they don't think I just don't care and would rather catch
up on Facebook (which I'm not a member of) or Reddit (which I rarely visit
even on _my_ time)[5].

[0] It wasn't always, but I think after getting one of my children a phone and
noticing how he tended to be nose down most of the time, I notice it more.

[1] Something tells me they're not big on remote work. :)

[2] For those where work culture is different -- this is unusual enough of an
act that when people who hadn't worked with me directly saw me do this, I'd be
asked if I wanted the meeting start pushed back so I can run back to my desk
to get my laptop.

[3] For the same reasons; stop treating symptoms.

[4] I'm _frequently_ that guy. I have a lot of hobby interests that I follow
closely that few others in my office have expertise in, so while I might have
nothing to do with the work being done for a project, I may know something on
the security side of things that makes my presence in a meeting a huge time
saver for the organizer and -- provided I can sit in the room with my laptop
and quietly code away until that nugget of usefulness pops up -- it's not a
huge time-suck for me.

[5] Where there are gaps of understanding, people jump to the worst possible
conclusion -- "he's probably screwing around instead of _actually working_
because this meeting is _really important_ " (just not to what he _actually
needs to get done_ ).

~~~
bmans94
_The problem is that most of the individuals invited to a meeting are not
needed, they know they 're not needed, and they've got other things that they
are needed for._

Agreed. Just because someone HAS to give their input in a conversation for an
item to move forward, does not mean they need to be pulled away from their
work for 1+ hours. Meetings really should be broken up into two roles:
brainstormers, who are truly the people working their way through the item,
and "expert witnesses" who can provide key details or contributions as
necessary, through slack like you said.

------
Pfhreak
Everyone left?

~~~
_rpd
> Workers use watches and laptops instead

