MANAGING THE DARK SIDE OF BRIGHT SCREENS
To paraphrase William Shakespeare, the screens in workplaces are neither good nor bad, but how we use them makes them so.1
Or, to paraphrase the ’60s science fiction television show The Outer Limits, we control the picture.
Unfortunately, organizations don’t always capitalize on this ability to take control. Instead, they adopt tech innovation after tech innovation without thinking about the consequences, which may include people—from telemarketers to content moderators to every one of us—who work days or weeks without meaningful human-to-human interaction or managers mistaking digital activity for productivity.
How can we manage ourselves and the cultures of our companies in an increasingly mobile, screen-based, networked world? How can we leverage the magic of modern technologies while retaining the meaning and wisdom of old, but still effective, practices?
Modern technology, from powerful smartphones to increased bandwidth speeds, is making it possible for a growing number of people to work remotely. Since their employees no longer need to be tethered to their offices by their devices, organizations are becoming more receptive to at-home workers, in part because it saves money on office space and in part because it helps them retain employees who would otherwise quit (they require the flexibility of home offices to take care of small children, for instance). Forrester Research’s US Telecommuting Forecast predicts that 43 percent of the workforce will soon be at-home employees, and even if that prediction is high, a growing number of people are physically separated from their colleagues because of new technologies.2
Even in the office, many employees are screen-locked, failing to travel from their computers to water coolers, coffee machines, and lunchrooms that were previously where a lot of informal business was conducted and relationships were formed.
The increased screen time of employees tilts the balance away from in-person connection and toward machine-mediated interactions. They’re empathizing, debating, and reflecting less while streaming, texting, and emailing more. To restore the human-to-technology balance, we need to proactively create screen-use policies and review them continuously. If we take a laissez-faire attitude toward this issue, the natural seductiveness of glowing screens will erode the story in every organization.
In Deep Work, author Cal Newport posits the title concept of intense and sustained concentration as the key to innovation and productivity. Newport suggests that in our digital work worlds, we often don’t have the opportunity for this sort of deep work, instead spending time sending and responding to emails and texts, being distracted by electronic notifications, and so on.3
But we can’t return to the past. Organizations would be poorly served by retro policies that forbid electronic devices or impose severe restrictions on their use. We can, however, find a way to integrate story activities with spreadsheet ones. To begin this integration, we need to be aware of the dramatic changes that have taken place in our workplace environments in a relatively short period of time. With this awareness we can see what’s being lost, what’s being gained, and how we can retain the best of both.
A Contrast Between Then and Now
I first joined Leo Burnett in 1982, when it was located in Chicago’s Prudential Building, and we moved to our current location in 1989. From an office space perspective, the two most common complaints about that first building were its lack of sufficient conference rooms and its shortage of corner offices. As a result, our current building was designed with an abundance of conference rooms and twelve corner offices per floor (corner being a relative term—the design created additional corners besides the obvious four where building sides connected).
We’re about to move again, but this time the offices are being designed with no corner offices and minimal conference room space. The concern now is about mobility—or the lack of it, given how people are addicted to their screens. People complain that their colleagues are “hiding out” in their offices and that they don’t see them enough. The new design is supposed to promote human interactions, something that no one had to promote when I was at the old building.
I relate this story because the contrast between 1989 and now is instructive. The proliferation of screens has changed the workplace in ways both obvious and subtle, and it’s worth analyzing these changes, since they demonstrate how and why we need to manage our use of screens. The changes fall into three categories:
1. How we access, produce, and share information;
2. Where and how we work; and
3. How we engage with our colleagues and clients or customers.
How We Access, Produce, and Share Information
Then: Obtaining information was a time-consuming, effort-driven task until about twenty years ago. Before then most corporate offices had many rooms and hallways containing black-and-gray filing cabinets, which housed organizational information. In some instances, companies had “librarians” who helped people access this information, but it was usually a haphazard retrieval process. At Burnett, we often had to ask around for the information we needed, sending a written memo to people, requesting them to point us in the direction of someone who might know what we needed to know.
Producing information was a laborious effort. Typically, notes were handwritten, then a secretary typed them (Wite-Out was crucial to correct mistakes), and Xerox machines helped create multiple copies of documents we wanted distributed. Similarly, sharing information was no easy task. For presentations we relied on overhead projectors requiring special acetates. Internal mail was delivered a few times daily throughout the office, and delivering information outside the office relied on the postal service or, when time was of the essence, delivery services. Eventually faxes were introduced, a “miracle” technology that allowed the electronic transfer of information.
Still, looking back, information moved slowly and with a certain amount of difficulty.
Now: Information moves with great speed, ease, and flexibility. Search engines are the real miracle—helping organizations access, collate, produce, and distribute work—and they usually don’t require anything except using tools created by Microsoft, Adobe, Slack, and so on. Everything from charts to presentations looks great, and everything can be easily tailored for different audiences. Information is moved instantly both internally and externally, and sharing occurs with a click.
On the downside, the ease and speed of obtaining and sharing information creates an overload. In organizations, most leaders and managers feel like they’re failing to keep up with all the knowledge they need to absorb. Documents arrive engorged with links and attachments, and the speed of information renders the latest news dated just seconds, minutes, or hours after it arrives on the screen.
Where and How We Work4
Then: The office was the place to be, and everyone was expected to be physically present at least 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. during weekdays and sometimes on weekends. Conference rooms were so critical to the functioning of organizations that full-time employees were needed to schedule the continuous flow of meetings. People sat in offices or cubicles, and few common areas existed.
Though some worked outside of the office, what they did externally was quite different from today. Back then, this work often involved reading materials that they couldn’t get to when they were in the office. Without the connectivity of the internet or widespread use of mobile phones, the ability to work anywhere except the office was severely limited.
Most managers had support staffs of clerical people as well as a number of direct reports to get work done, and to get it done efficiently, people met often in the office, both in groups and one-on-one.
Now: Like many executives, I rarely need to go to my office since most of my interactions are with extended global teams who are networked through email, Dropbox folders, social networks, and Skype. And like many other business people, I’m on the road more, as are my colleagues and clients; various devices become our main form of communication. I have an administrative assistant, but I can perform most work on my own.
Office plans are increasingly open and less space-specific—people are gone so much that having a permanent, private office is far less important than in the past. In fact, armed with a laptop and a mobile phone, even high-level executives no longer need to use the same office daily. Senior managers may rotate between floors and teams based on need, hunkering down in the space of the people with whom they are working; they retreat to phone rooms and other, more secluded spots when they need privacy for calls, thinking, writing, and one-on-one meetings.
How We Engage with Our Colleagues and Clients or Customers
Then: Years ago, our agency, Leo Burnett, created a famous commercial for our client United Airlines. In the spot, a boss tells his team they were just fired by a customer, blaming team members for having lost touch with the customer. He says that they hadn’t visited the customer enough, and he is giving them airline tickets so they can start seeing their customers face-to-face more frequently. The boss adds that he is going to fly to see the customer that had just fired them.5
As this commercial suggests, engaging meant numerous and regular meetings, lunches, conferences, and so on. People engaged formally through scheduled appointments and informally through lunches, drinks, golf, and other activities. It was assumed that you couldn’t build a meaningful business relationship—be it with a colleague, a customer, or a vendor—without these interactions.
Now: We engage in an erratic manner. On the one hand, we’re reaching out to people digitally and constantly, connecting via texts, emails, and chats. We communicate with more people more often than ever before. On the other hand, we can go weeks without having a meaningful, in-person interaction or even a one-on-one phone conversation.
So while we’re likely to be better informed about what the people in our networks are doing, we’re less likely to know what’s going on beneath the surface. Distance is the enemy of intimacy, and work intimacy means you feel free to disagree with your boss or suggest a potentially profitable but risky idea. It’s tough to be completely open and honest during digital exchanges.
While Google Hangouts and other innovations save organizations time and money and provide forums for thought-provoking discussions, they are inherently limited communications forums. When people meet physically, they don’t just have conversations—they have premeeting conversations, side conversations, and rambling, free-form conversations. Ideas emerge in these looser dialogues that rarely surface during nonphysical exchanges. This is the story part of work—spontaneous, provocative, and at times emotive. Literal stories are told—about Jack’s feud with Jerry in finance, the yearlong quest to secure the biggest customer in the company’s history. But there’s also the less formal but no less significant parts of the company story—the evolving relationships, the kind words offered to a colleague going through a tough period, the intellectually stimulating debate in a team meeting. A digital medium is less receptive to story (though as we’ll see, organizations can make it more receptive). It is more receptive to fragmented exchanges and data points.
There’s a great story about Steve Jobs, who was convinced that unplanned meetings produced great ideas, wanting to build all of Pixar’s bathrooms in one corner of the building to facilitate spontaneous interactions between employees. It never happened, perhaps hurting productivity but benefiting those with weak bladders.6
What We Gain and What We Lose in a Screen-Dominated Workplace
There are many advantages that today’s distributed, networked, tech-enabled, screen-based ways of working bring about. On the bright side:
INCREASED INCLUSIVENESS. Through a wide range of digital tools, organizations foster a participatory environment. People are connected to their peers and their bosses and direct reports in ways that never were possible in an earlier era (because of logistical constraints). There is the opportunity to connect with people not only within one’s own office but with people in offices around the world.
ENHANCED SPEED AND COST SAVINGS. It’s easier and cheaper to move bits and images and voice and data across screens than it is to move people from place to place. Targeted data is readily accessible on almost any subject, and it arrives with a speed that we could only have dreamed about a few decades ago.
BETTER VISUALS. Modern software and embedding technology lets everyone become a skilled multimedia producer, using deep charts, graphs, and videos. Images have become a primary form of digital communication, and we can manipulate images to do everything from telling a product story to customers to conveying the CEO’s organizational vision.
MORE KNOWLEDGE. Screens are portals to the world of information, and today employees know more and know it faster than in the past. They not only can access fixed data sources (e.g., reports, surveys, etc.) but obtain real-time feedback via social media and connections with customers, vendors, and other employees.
There is, however, a dark side:
LACK OF FOCUS. When people look at a screen, they are often distracted by incoming messages, notifications, and the social media reflex to check what’s new. Paying attention to the matter at hand—creating a strategy, responding to a quality issue, etc.—is difficult amid continuous visual and aural distractions. In addition, screens make it relatively easy to compile reports, presentations, speeches, memos, and white papers. Before, you had to work hard to gather the research and analyze it; it demanded time and effort and journeys (to libraries, conferences, and interviews) that provided the space to think deeply about what was learned. Now the ease of access eliminates that time and effort. When you can put things together effortlessly, you are less likely to pause, reflect, and analyze in a focused manner.
DIMINISHED COMMUNICATION. While screens can convey far more information than in the past, communication consists of more things than data. Tone of voice, body language, and the context of sharing information all play roles in what is learned. In a screen-dominant environment, these nuances of communication are often lost. As a result, screen conversations feel stilted and prevent the sort of spontaneous, free-flowing dialogues that produce new ideas, fresh perspectives, and productive work. Emojis and clip art can make communication generic and PowerPoint decks are one-way and fixed communication vehicles. A Harvard Magazine article titled “The Water Cooler Effect” cited a study by the Harvard Medical School revealing that researchers in close physical proximity produced higher-impact research results than those who worked at greater distances.7
WEAKENED RELATIONSHIPS. When people spend a lot of time together—on trips, at conferences, in offices, at lunch—they develop deep relationships where trust and openness exist. This trust and openness creates loyalty, a willingness to provide honest feedback, and other benefits. More superficial relationships are the norm when people work together via screens, tending to make them less-effective collaborators and less willing to be vulnerable, as well as diminishing organizational affiliation and loyalty.
There are many other pros and cons, but here’s the takeaway: Screens are a double-edged sword. For every pro, there’s a con.
Today, management can be more present than ever before in their employees’ work lives using digital communication tools, such as town hall meetings. At the same time, CEOs may come across to employees as nothing more than a moving image, a curated talking-point memo, a CEO avatar.
Rank-and-file workers may be able to make themselves heard and participate more in organizational life, but they also may feel chained to their digital devices, constantly monitored and required to attend a never-ending series of virtual events.
What it comes down to is this: organizations can use screens to filter, project, and separate, or they can turn them into windows that let in the light of learning, diverse viewpoints, and cross-boundary communication.
Seeing Technology from a Human Perspective
We take technology for granted, and that’s not a good thing in workplace environments. Being conscious of how technology affects employees, customers, and other stakeholders helps mitigate its negative effects. I have attempted to maintain this consciousness throughout my thirty-seven-year career, a career that has witnessed and been a catalyst of digital transformation. I was one of the first employees in my company to receive a BlackBerry and an IBM ThinkPad, and the first to receive a home ISDN connection. I lobbied our board of directors twenty years ago to adopt a fast T-1 Ethernet to increase the speed of employee internet access.
As I fought to adopt each new technological innovation, I observed the effect it had on people. Over time, I’ve found that three observations are particularly valuable to organizations, providing them with insights into how the latest device or piece of software will affect employees.
1. Technology is a badge.
Like a Boy Scout merit badge or any positive symbol of achievement, the best technology is something that people feel pride in if they have it and envy if they don’t. Technology affects perceptions; judgments are made based on the quality of technology, affecting how outsiders view companies and how insiders view themselves.
When I launched Leo Burnett’s interactive marketing group, I insisted that we have a T-1 line brought into the building. I used the fast internet in a mostly dial-up age to prove to clients that we were as “with it” as new digital start-ups and signal to employees that we were serious about the future.
When I helped cofound Giant Step, we had a huge server room with racks of machines behind transparent glass, blinking and beeping for all to see, which created an aura of competence and industrial depth for what was at that time a thirty-person company.
When I started Starcom IP, I insisted that we give every employee (not just senior employees) laptops and pay for all home internet services. This not only allowed employees the flexibility to work from home while feeling the pride of being modernly equipped, it also allowed us to attract the best and the brightest who worked all the time, since they took their laptops home.
This wasn’t just about increasing our ability to do good work; it was about perception. I remember clients—some from the largest companies in the world—walking into our office and being both impressed by our technology and jealous that they had nothing like it at their headquarters. More important, it became a point of pride for employees to be on the technological cutting edge. It encouraged them to make use of the technology in the best ways possible—to connect with others, to solicit diverse ideas and opinions, to explore areas of information that they might have ignored in the past.
2. Life, not just work, happens on technology devices.
Organizations are notorious for trying to separate the personal and the professional, but this is not only a futile endeavor but a counterproductive one. People are going to email friends and family, check their stock portfolios, and go on social media sites during the workday. When organizational policies limit or ban these personal activities, they are denying the humanness of their people. Amazon recently sought a patent on a digital wristband designed to monitor employee productivity—it tracks the hand motions of employees in warehouses to determine if they’re engaged in “picking and sorting.” This seems overly Big Brotherish; most employees want to be treated like responsible human beings, not slackers.
When organizational policies allow life to happen on technology, they empower their people, communicating that they trust them not to take unfair advantage of the freedom they’re being given. A minority of employees may abuse this privilege, but the majority will appreciate the trust and respond by being more diligent and productive.
3. Physical gatherings, combined with technology, can turbocharge innovation, productivity, and relationships.
For the past twenty years, my senior executive status has allowed me to insist on, enable, and fund periodic gatherings of team members for in-person meetings that are a combination update and social session. These meetings ideally take place weekly, but at least once a month, at the end of a day. Members in different offices always gather together in someone’s room or office, and we dial in other gatherings in other offices. The first half of the call is updates, introducing new members, sharing learning. We then move to the second half, which is someone sharing stories about the craziest client meeting or most embarrassing event, while others discuss either movies or books on a theme. We provide drinks and snacks.
After the meetings, people use technology to share memes on some of the funny topics or to build on the learning. These tech follow-ups often yield nuggets of insight; people think about what was said during the in-person meetings and, after having some time to think and reflect, they use their devices to communicate their thoughts, which often are highly original and perceptive. Without the in-person meetings, however, it’s unlikely that they would take the risk of sharing a “different” opinion or a daring concept. Being with other people—getting to know them and letting them know you—encourages taking these types of risks, and technology facilitates the process.
It’s instructive that almost all leading tech companies have these all-hands-on-deck meetings. They know they can’t live and innovate by tech alone.
The Need for Guidance in Increasingly Screen-Dominant Cultures
The playfield is constantly tilting in the technology direction. In the coming months and years, the IoT and related technologies will turn a growing number of everyday objects into computing devices. Advanced material tech will foster better and more pliable (and even foldable) displays. Augmented and virtual reality will envelop us, and AI will allow us to work faster and more effectively toward solving even the most difficult problems. And we can anticipate machines speaking directly to us all the time; we will have conversations with our intelligent machines like we might have with our colleagues, dialogues designed to tease out issues, obtain information, and formulate strategies. Think of Amazon Echo and Google Home on steroids.
In organizations we’re going to be relying on our screens even more in the very near future. In many ways this will be beneficial. As I’ve suggested, our digital devices and the software inside them can foster better exchanges of information, open us up to new learning, and trigger innovative ideas. The increased portability and powers of devices will increase workplace agility—they will let us work anywhere, and they will encourage us to consider a diversity of options and knowledge.
The danger, though, is that we become so dependent on all the ubiquitous screens and their multiplying capabilities that we lose instinct, relationships, and many other qualities that define us and help us work productively. Therefore, we need guidelines on how to work well in a screen-dominant workplace, and here are the policies I’d suggest.
ALLOW TEAMS AND INDIVIDUALS TO USE TECHNOLOGY ANY WAY THEY CHOOSE. I would add “within reason” to the end of the previous sentence, but it’s unnecessary, at least for most employees. Yes, if someone is spending his day visiting porn sites or playing online games, that’s not a productive use of his time, but this type of individual is probably not long for the organization. You wouldn’t insist that everyone in your group dress alike, write the same way, or adhere to a rigid business philosophy. In an environment where agility is critical, maximize versatility with your technology use policies. Broad guidelines are fine, like minimize use of phones and other devices during in-person meetings to respect the presenter. Restrictive rules, however, will be seen by employees as draconian and alienate them. Give freedom to communicate authentically in the digital space, and it’s possible that they’ll use their technology to allow who they are and what they believe to come through.
SCHEDULE AT LEAST ONE THIRTY-MINUTE MEETING WEEKLY WITH ONE PERSON OR A FEW PEOPLE. These are opportunities to build relationships, and if you keep the group small and it lasts only thirty minutes, the meetings will help foster meaningful interactions that aren’t possible digitally. It really doesn’t matter what the meeting topics are, and it’s great to veer off work subjects into other matters. The key is offsetting all the digital exchanges with some in-person ones.
FIND WAYS TO USE SCREEN-BASED TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE GROUP DYNAMICS. For instance, create team-wide groups on Facebook, WhatsApp, or other social media, or shared folders or fantasy leagues to allow for cross-team communication. This technology personalizes screen time, allowing users to project who they are as individuals. While this isn’t a substitute for in-person meetings, it is a supplement representing a way that tech encourages relationship building.
REFRAIN FROM USING TECH TOOLS AS A REFLEX. Many managers can’t give a presentation without PowerPoint. Technological tools are great in certain circumstances, but they train people to focus on screens and how things look rather than what is being said. I make all my presentations without any multimedia. I’ve found that this approach not only helps an audience pay more attention to what I’m trying to communicate, but it helps me pay more attention to them as well. When working on projects, I’ll sometimes ask people for ideas or updates in writing (using those ancient tools of paper and pen or pencil). I’ve found that people are more creative and productive when given the opportunity to respond in this manner—just as artists are more creative when given canvas and brushes (rather than screens), businesspeople often respond better when they have the freedom of a pad of paper and a writing implement.
ENCOURAGE EMPLOYEES TO CREATE SELF-IMPOSED LIMITS ON SCREEN TIME. The best way to encourage this behavior is by modeling it. For instance, I create an oasis of screen-free time for myself daily. For a few hours, I keep my phone on mute and step away from devices so I’m not distracted by notifications and other digital communications. I put my phone away when I’m conversing with others and don’t pull it out while waiting in lines. All this helps facilitate daydreaming, reflection, and analysis—activities that make me a more thoughtful and incisive leader.
Similarly, recommend to your people that they restrict their use of social media. As valuable as social media is as a communication and learning tool, continuous streaming can narrow our perception of reality. I carve out fifteen-minute blocks of free time for social media four times daily, and I would suggest to your people that they adopt this practice. It provides just enough of a break without being distracted by continuous notifications, updates, messages, and so on.
Every Screen Can Tell a Story
A device’s screen doesn’t have to be dominated by the spreadsheet. As much as we associate our screens with numbers and facts, they can also be sources of innovation and inspiration. They can be conduits for the type of stories that foster relationships and provide insights—relationships and insights that can help organizational employees work more effectively on teams and become more innovative in their thinking. But these benefits won’t be realized if we leave our devices to their own devices.
Instead of just accepting what appears on our screens, we must be proactive in managing how, why, and when they’re used. In 1998, I cofounded a company for digital media called Starcom IP. At the beginning there were just two of us, but over time we grew to more than one hundred employees. In 2018, we decided to hold a reunion for the hundreds of people who had worked at Starcom IP during this twenty-year period. We used Facebook to help spread the word about the reunion and posted photos of employees who had come and gone. We had the reunion in Chicago, and people came from all over the country (including one guy who brought a business card of someone who had visited our offices in 1998, when he was starting his company—the card read, “Sergey Brin, Google”).
After the reunion, we followed up with posts summarizing what various alumni and current employees were doing. In response, people commented and told stories about their experiences at Starcom IP. Reading all the posts and seeing all the pictures was a great supplement to the reunion itself; the digital forum on social media allowed a much broader discussion than was possible at the physical reunion, since more people could participate. Using the social media page we created, they participated eagerly and at times eloquently. All the digital exchanges strengthened the sense of affiliation and engagement we all shared.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Today’s mobile and networked workplaces offer many options and greater flexibility to be productive. At the same time, they also create workplace culture challenges: How can you avoid feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, and remote? And how can you encourage your team to avoid this as well?
• Maximizing the best of the screen-based world, while minimizing its downside, means recognizing that technology is not good or bad, but how we use it makes it so.
• Limit the use of screens. Be aware of their ability to colonize our time and minds, and make it a point to have as many in-person interactions as possible.