Tech companies' distracted workers are told to come to meetings 'topless'

By Jessica Guynn |Los Angeles Times

March 30, 2008

"Aside from just being rude, partial attention generally leads to partial results."

His San Francisco design firm, Adaptive Path, now strongly encourages all staffers to leave their laptops at their desks. His colleague, Dan Saffer, coined the term "topless," as in "laptop-less." Also booted are mobile and smart phones, which must be stowed on a counter or in a box during meetings. It took some convincing, but soon people began connecting with each other rather than with their computers, Wilkens said.

"All of our meetings got a lot more productive," he said.

It's not exactly attention deficit. Linda Stone, a software executive who worked for Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., calls it "continuous partial attention." It stems from an intense desire to connect and be connected all the time: to be, in her words, "a live node on the network."

And it seems to have engulfed all aspects of life, including the workplace.

The ever-increasing speed and power of technology allows employees to effortlessly toggle back and forth between tasks. The wireless revolution has only accelerated this trend, turning every laptop computer into a lightning-quick, mobile communications hub. Darting among multiple screens from an early age, young people in particular thrive on that connectivity.

"It's increasingly difficult to get people's undivided attention," said Stanford University professor Pamela Hinds, who studies the effects of technology on groups. The culprit: Etiquette has not kept up with technology, said Sue Fox, author of Business Etiquette for Dummies.

"Social norms say that the person you are conversing with takes precedence over text messaging, e-mail and cell phone. This rule applies in business as well," Fox said. "Today, people seem to be more focused on their fancy gadgets than on other people. Face-to-face meetings have become a low priority because they're constantly being interrupted by technology, and many people can't figure out what to do."

Late in 2007, Jeremy Zawodny, who works with outside software developers at Yahoo Inc., attended his first "no laptops" meeting at the Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company.

"I looked around in amazement that no one had their laptops open," he said.

"I try not to bring my laptop to meetings because the pull is strong if I am not interested in something being discussed or if the topic doesn't directly involve me."

The folks at Dogster Inc., the San Francisco company that runs the sites Dogster.com and Catster.com, decided to cut the cord about a year ago. The decision was in keeping with its philosophy of creating a collaborative culture, said company co-founder John Vars.

"Even if people are just taking notes, they are not giving the natural human signals that they are listening to the person who is presenting or speaking," he said. "It builds up resentment. It can become something that inhibits good teamwork."

Selina Lo doesn't mind if her employees multitask in meetings. After all, the energetic chief executive of Ruckus Wireless, a Sunnyvale-based WiFi company, is a known workaholic.

"Occasionally, if I see someone too absorbed reading e-mails, I will elbow them," she said. And that makes some people wonder if by focusing on gadgets and gimmicks, everyone's missing the real problem.

"People hate most meetings," Zawodny said. "No one teaches anyone to run them correctly. They become a source of frustration."

That frustration is so widespread that some start-ups cut meetings short or do away with them altogether.

Mountain View, Calif., Internet company Plaxo Inc. took a "meat ax" to meetings, moving them all to Tuesdays with the goal of making other days more productive. (They called it "Meataxo.")

San Francisco event planning site Socializr Inc. has only one meeting a week, during lunch. "That way, even if the meeting is a complete pointless waste of time, we still ate," said company founder Jonathan Abrams.

Photo-sharing site SmugMug Inc. in Mountain View is an "anti-meeting" company, founder Don MacAskill said.

"We have a single all-hands meeting once per week, and the emphasis is on getting it over fast. Only one topic is allowed. Each person is expected to answer the question 'What am I working on this week?' and is expressly forbidden to talk about what they did the week before, make announcements, ask questions, etc."