How to Deal With a BlackBerry Junkie

Hey, you! Pay attention! Now! Two Northwest pilots had their licenses stripped away because they reportedly flew off-course, incommunicado, while scheduling future flights on their personal laptops instead of paying attention to their existing flight. Can you believe it? I do.

Mobile devices are the great distractions &#8212 and distractors — of the Information Age. I’ve heard nurses whisper about doctors who check their Blackberries in the middle of laparoscopic procedures and anesthesiologists who fiddle with their iPods while monitoring vital signs. We want what we want when we want it and we want it now! Even if that means we (inadvertently) overfly Minneapolis by 150 miles.

Netiquette is nice and multimedia manners are marvelous but the central issue here is performance and productivity. The same laptops those pilots were allegedly using to debate scheduling seniority can also be used to real-time recalculate fuel level reroutes. When you toss in a laptop or mobile device, anyone — in theory — can become more efficient and effective. That’s as true for neurosurgery teams at Massachusetts General Hospital as for SEAL teams in Kabul. Wouldn’t you want your surgeon to be able to have all the info they need, when they need it, to boost their real-time operational effectiveness?

Unfortunately, these technologies are — to paraphrase military folks — inherently “dual use.” That is to say, we can use them either to better focus on the task at hand or to multitask something else. Every university professor lecturing in America wonders which students are assiduously taking notes on their laptops and which are assiduously playing Scrabulous. Do professors really want to play “Big Brother” or block the digital deployment of their students’, um, personal educational technologies? Of course not. And anyway, they can’t — any more than King Canute could hold back the tide.

But what about when your firm is making an “agency-of-record” pitch to a much-desired client and the client’s alpha-dog Chief Marketing Officer keeps pecking away on his BlackBerry while your team presents? (This actually happened.) What should you do?

No, the team lead didn’t keep quiet until the CMO looked up. No, the team lead didn’t politely ask if BlackBerries could be put away until the presentation’s end. The team pressed on. Like the Charge of the Light Brigade.

And no, the firm didn’t win the business. And, yes, everyone was bitter about the CMO’s publicly divided attentions. This company now vows never to let client gizmos distract from the business at hand ever again. They’ll ask for undivided attention or they’ll walk. Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

Would you tell a C-level prospect or a key client to put his iPhone away? Really? Have you ever done it? And what would your emotional — and professional — reaction be to an expensive consultant or mission-critical vendor politely insisting that you shut down your laptop or turn off your phone?

I’ve seen Starbucks and McDonald’s employees (politely) decline to serve customers chatting away on their phones as they try to order their skinny lattes. Manners aren’t the issue; it’s done to keep the line flowing smoothly.

Remember, digital device checking can be deceiving. Google CEO Eric Schmidt (no less) has publicly run searches to real-time “fact check” comments by his fellow executives during meetings. He’s not unique. When someone makes claims during a presentation that don’t quite sound right, I’ve Googled or Binged and found — big surprise — that the speaker is often guilty of exaggeration well beyond the boundaries of acceptable puffery. I may look like I’m ignoring the presenter but, in fact, I’m taking him or her more seriously than they might like.

Some companies — Microsoft is one — have declared that certain meetings should be device-free. Attendees have to check their Zunes and mobile what-nots at the door. Frankly, I don’t think that this is remotely practical unless the highest-ranked executive in the room honors that constraint. Surreptitious texting has become as American as apple pie, as Indian as curry, and as Nordic as lutefisk.

Demographic and technological trends would suggest that by 2015, the typical meeting will have more devices being monitored than people in the room.

Is there a solution to this growing problem? Why, yes…and I’ve seen it work with my own undistracted eyes.

Make meetings more interactive. Push for participation. Call on — and call out — that CMO. Create expectations that inhibit leaning back and promote the lean forward. If people think they can get away with diverting their attention, they will. Do you think commercial airline pilots all over the world will think twice before they spend more than 15 minutes on their laptops doing non-flight-related calculations? I do. Do you think students will think twice about IM-ing their sweetheart if there’s a better than even chance they’ll be called on in class? I do. Do you think a CMO will think twice before checking her messages if two of the best-regarded advertising agencies simply shut up — or decline to present — until she makes it clear to everyone in the room that she’s fully engaged? I do.

You manage attention not by regulating devices but by managing expectations. If those pilots had even once successfully interacted with an air traffic controller or one of the other pilots trying to hail them, they’d have likely kept their licenses. They didn’t. The best way to command undivided attention — and respect — is to lead by example.

What example are you setting? Pay attention.

A researcher at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business and a visiting fellow at the Imperial College Business School, Michael Schrage is the author of Serious Play and the forthcoming Getting Beyond Ideas. His research focuses on the behavioral economics of innovation through models, prototypes, simulations and experiments.