The Big Story: CEOs Are Furious About Employees Texting in Meetings – WSJ
“Bosses have long railed against distractions in meetings, but some say it’s gotten worse.”
Combatting multi-tasking, scrolling and other sins
By Tim Stewart
4-minute read
Every few months, a new workplace scourge takes the long journey from “Is this a real problem?” to “Time for a Wall Street Journal examination.” It’s a phenomenon predating the pandemic, but like many things in American culture it has intensified over the past decade. The endless return-to-work wars, quiet quitting, quiet promotion, the great resignation…and on and on.
The latest issue consuming (or being idly discussed in, it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference with these things) C-suites? People texting during meetings. JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon’s so annoyed about it – as he has been about many of the office issues that came before – he’s talked about it in his annual investor letter and from the dais of various thought leader conferences.
Ask anyone who isn’t the CEO of one of the world’s largest companies and you’ll get a range of responses on whether texting in meetings is a big problem, a little problem or no problem at all. Eye of the beholder and all that. Sometimes it’s useful, sometimes annoying and sometimes both.
Either way, the proliferation of meeting multitasking does get to something maybe more interesting than whether it’s good or bad, which is that the expansion of our Meeting Industrial Complex brings alongside it a sense that there is always something outside of the current meeting more pressing or at least more interesting that needs to be addressed immediately.
From best to worst
Perhaps the problem isn’t what people are doing during meetings, but rather how we’re choosing to congregate people relative to the task at hand. To give your team something to sidebar on during your next all-hands, we’ve taken a shot at ranking types of meetings, from best to worst:
- Everyone in person: This is the best meeting for a number of reasons, with the obvious caveat that everything that has to happen outside of the meeting – scheduling, logistics, commutes – to make an in-person meeting happen is a genuinely limiting factor. Just as we’re not reducing the number of meetings by decree, neither will we go back 10 years to everyone sitting in the same office. But there’s an organic energy that comes with being fully embodied in organic form, with greater opportunity for real conversation, pleasant small talk and body language reads. Often, there are snacks nearby that someone else bought.
- Everyone on video, off mute (five-person max): While many have remarked on the disengagement communicated by being off video, one could argue that in a small group meeting mute is a greater barrier. If you’ve got a small group collaborating, the tiny barrier between mute and off mute can be enough to miss a moment to build on an idea or land a perfectly timed joke. We can’t hear the construction next door, or your dog or the doorbell. So don’t worry about leaving that audio line open.
- Telephone: Perhaps the most undervalued resource in 2020s Meetings. We used to do this all the time, and it wasn’t that long ago. Sure, in a group call sometimes you didn’t know if that was Brian talking or if it was Steve. But we figured it out. The combination of not worrying about how you’re looking on camera and the ability to walk away from all the distractions on your screen make this retro relic a surprisingly effective meeting venue, for those who dare to buck trends.
- Half in person, half joining remotely: This is tough because it’s really two different meetings happening simultaneously. For the people in the room, they’re engaged with one another, perhaps even enjoying those snacks someone else bought. Yet the folks on the screen can feel like they’re at the kids’ table, silently weighing whether their contributions are valuable enough to interrupt the conversation happening close, but far away.
- Everyone off camera and on mute except one person: This is where we get into individual organization norms, and meetings that could be emails. The idea of joining a big group meeting off camera is fair and welcome for people who are spending large parts of their day trying to look thoughtfully into a quarter-inch dot above their screen. But there’s almost no lonelier place than being the meeting presenter looking at a sea of blank screens and anonymous names. What are they doing back there? Probably not paying rapt attention to you.
- Everyone on camera and on mute except one person: The only lonelier place for the person talking. You look out at a sea of faces and fake backgrounds trapped behind glass, with no one reaching out to click the mute button and rescue you from yourself. This circle of hell is why breakout rooms were invented, but that door just leads to a smaller hell and a bunch of people scrambling to leave the meeting before they’re thrown into an unfamiliar Zoom closet with people they may or may not want to break out with. The risk isn’t worth the reward, leaving only one option to eject themselves from the meeting.
Whether you’re texting through them or ruthlessly maximizing their efficiency, the dominance of meeting culture is a fever with no signs of breaking. Perhaps instead of policing how people interact within them, we can encourage full participation by being a little more thoughtful about the forms our meetings take.
And of course, your list may vary. So feel free to circle back and schedule a touch base to report out.
Image credit: Shannon Threadgill
