"No Laptop" Meetings: Baby and Bathwater?
Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawodny recently blogged about a proto-trend he’s seeing in the workplace: meetings that advertise and enforce a “no laptop” rule. The idea behind this is that if people don’t really find a meeting important enough to pay attention to, they shouldn’t be there, and that we’ve reached the point where such common courtesy needs to be demanded rather than assumed.
It’s an attractive idea to anyone who has ever attended a meeting at which most of the people were paying more attention to their screen and keyboard than to the presenter. But in our view, this seemingly innocuous rule just makes the laptop a scapegoat for the underlying problems, which have little to do with laptops (or other devices) themselves.
There are two problems here. First, issuing a blanket ban on laptops at meetings ignores the very real benefits that they can bring to meetings. As typing dominates our working day, many of us take better notes on the keyboard than with a pencil and paper. Meeting presenters, of course, use the laptop to hold their slides and examples. At other meetings, it’s a real time-saver to be tied in live to an issue tracking database or a corporate calendar, so that information can be brought in and decisions recorded in the appropriate system quickly.
Second, if a meeting doesn’t demand the attention of the attendees, why blame the attendees rather than the meeting organizer? If people are distracted during your meetings, it’s time to consider the possibility that you are having too many meetings or inviting too many people. Attention doesn’t seem to be an issue at the truly important meetings in many organizations.
Of course, to some extent web workers have an advantage here: as long as you’re using a teleconference instead of a videoconference, and have a reasonably silent keyboard, no one can tell if you’re bringing your laptop (or even your desktop!) to a meeting. But it ought to be possible for reasonable adults to be engaged in a meeting whether they happen to have a laptop, a notepad, or a bagel in front of them. If they can’t, look to the underlying social and process issues, not to the handiest technology in the room, for the blame.
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“if a meeting doesn’t demand the attention of the attendees, why blame the attendees rather than the meeting organizer? ”
I dunno Mike. It seems like everyone wants all of the meetings (and lectures and conference presentations) that they go to to entertain them and if it doesn’t do that they feel perfectly justified in hanging out on Twitter, IMing friends, etc.
“t other meetings, it’s a real time-saver to be tied in live to an issue tracking database or a corporate calendar, so that information can be brought in and decisions recorded in the appropriate system quickly.”
Sure. But not everyone in the meeting usually needs to be tied into these systems. If it’s valuable for the meeting participants to see the issues database or corporate calendar etc, bring it up on screen. Everyone doesn’t need to have it on their personal laptop.
I think what has Jeremy up in arms is that people who are paying attention to their laptops aren’t focused on the meeting. If the meeting is worthwhile and you invited them because you really need to have them there, then it’s flat out rude for them to do something else during the meeting. And in the vast majority of cases it IS something else that more people end up doing, not work that’s relevant to the meeting they’re in.
I agree with you, Mike. I think the real issue it that most meetings are either boring or unnecessary. But unlike Mr. Gregory, I do not see it as a matter of being entertained, but rather one of relevance. If the meeting organizer feels the subject matter is important, then it is the organizer’s responsibility to ensure that the attendees understand how the subject relates to them or what they do.
Similarly, it seems many meetings are convened for the purpose of conveying information that could just as easily be disseminated via e-mail or some other means.
While people should certainly pay attention, and the speaker should strive to hold their attention – I can’t count the number of meetings where the guy beside me had the audacity to read email, IM someone, and even check his “matchmaker.com” messages while in a staff meeting. I think that Jeremy thinks that the only way to curb bad behavior is to eliminate the source of the problem – “the laptop”.
Yes…I’ve been in meetings with “no laptop” rules and you see the glazed over looks of the folks about to fall asleep during yet another pointless meeting rather than doing something productive on their laptop.
I couldn’t imagine instituting a no-laptop rule. It’s really a crutch for weak presenters and folks who insist on calling meetings for no real reason or inviting people who don’t really need to be there.
at my old job, we were a six-person team, two of the attendees routinely worked through entire meetings, paying little attention to the presenter (and looking sheepish when asked for input, having to ask for the topic to be repeated). we instituted a laptops-only-for-meeting-related-work (presenting, notetaking). it didn’t work. these laptop addicts kept bringing their laptops, under the guise that it was work-related.
the problem had nothing to do with the presenter or meeting topic, and everything to do with an addictive quality in these people’s relationships to their email. when someone is an addict, and they are abusing, you take the drink out of their hand. looking back, i wish our boss had had the nerve to set a firm no-laptops policy, despite the objections of the two addicts.
i believe that in addition to having more effective meetings, we would have had shorter meetings, with everyone eager to finish the business of the meeting and get back to their computers.
While I agree that laptops are not the real problem, relevant meetings are, the best solution is eliminate the laptop. When laptops are brought to meetings, there’s no incentive to be efficient. When meetings drag, no big deal, I’ll just check my email, IM the person I should be talking to, check my stock portfolio, etc. When laptops are gone, the attendees start asking “what’s the purpose?” and “how can we resolve this?”
But how else could you IM trash talk the presenters ideas to your homeys in the room?
I totally agree that laptops are a distraction in meetings… but maybe a no-wifi rule would remove much of the distraction while still allowing for note taking (though one could still catch up with mail offline).
If a laptop ban is imposed, what about blackberry/iphones??
Sure, meetings need to be relevant and far too many places have useless meetings. That’s certainly a fault of the company or at least the people calling those meetings.
But far too often the response to this kind of proposal (no laptops in classes/meetings/eetc) is that it’s the presenter’s fault, as if the people in the event have no responsibility to pay attention even if the presenter isn’t award-winningly engaging.
Presuming that the meeting is needed and you’re there for a reason – pay attention.
Some commenters here have already touched on my central point: Eliminate ALL Meetings.
Yahoo is great, but make the jump to hyperspace. At 38 years old, working for dozens of companies (and clients) in my life since the ripe age of 18, I have yet (!) to be in a meeting that was worthwhile.
I’m still waiting for it. Conferences can be good. Personal connections is great. A meeting led by a big cheese imparting his brand of knowledge or what-have-you to his underlings is and always will be a complete waste of time.
The costs of meetings are astronomical when you count up the salaries (times 1.5 for benefits/taxes). It is public school mentality that lets us sit still in our seats and listen to someone drone on while little dumbo in the corner derails the central points (if we can be so polite as to call the information ‘points’) with his or her comments and questions. Just like junior high all over.
There is no reason for anyone to have a meeting. So, save the ‘no laptop’ rule Jeremy. Start a ‘no meeting’ rule. If there is ANY other way to impart the information, the organization of the 21st century will use it.
Lawrence… I was hoping someone would say that. I’ve never been to a necessary meeting… including the many that I myself have called.