At least now I know I’m not the only one thinking it!
Recognise this? “We’re drowning in real-time virtual interaction technology, from Zoom to Slack to Teams, plus group texting, WeChat, WhatsApp, and everything in between.”
Oh! And email . . . .
There’s seemingly no excuse not to collaborate.
The problem?
Interacting is easier than ever, but true, productive, value-creating collaboration is not.
And what’s more, where engagement is occurring, its quality is deteriorating.
This wastes valuable resources, because every minute spent on a low-value interaction eats into time that could be used for important, creative, and powerful activities.
Endless meetings, incessant emails, and casts of thousands, companies have mastered the art of unnecessary interactions.
There are deeper issues too.
When we meet someone face to face they tend to get 100% of our attention (or maybe 80% if we are worrying about something else).
But online interactions have two problems;
- There is too much “on screen noise” going on during the meeting (side chat, messaging, email, etc)
- The neuroscientists say that we have to burn much more brainpower on interpreting the facial images on a screen than we do in real life, which might explain why we feel so tired at the end of a 12 hour day “staring down the barrel of a screen”.
But there is a ray of hope!
High-quality, focused interactions can improve productivity, speed, and innovation within any organisation—and drive better business performance.
Aaron De Smet, Caitlin Hewes, Mengwei Luo, J.R. Maxwell and Patrick Simon of McKinsey have shared more on the problem and some potential solutions here . . .
As we start a New Year, there may be no better time to address this “Elephant in the Room”.
Thanks for reading . .