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Stifling Creativity: Millennials and Baby Boomers, Attention Span and Excessive Use of Gadgetry or Tech 

30/11/2016

 
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In my opinion, overstimulation and unnecessary use of technology, smart phones and ‘gadgetry’ stifles organisation innovation and creativity.

Are people becoming less innovative in their thinking purely because of the excessive dependence and use of smart phones and other ‘gadgetry’ distracting them?  It seems so…..

Research from USC’s Marshall School of Business, strongly suggests that you are probably annoying your boss and colleagues any time you look at your phone during meetings.  This becomes increasingly the case if you work with women and people who are over 40. They’re even more perturbed by it than everyone else.
 
The researchers conducted a nationwide survey of over 550 full-time working professionals earning above $30K and working in companies with at least 50 employees. They asked about smartphone usage during meetings and discovered not unsurprisingly that:
  • 86% think it’s not appropriate to answer phone calls during meetings
  • 84% think it’s not okay to write texts or emails during meetings

But it is definitely a generational thing.

Millennials vs. Baby Boomers & Generation X

The research also suggests that Millennials are three times more likely than those over 40 to think that the use of the cell or smart phone is acceptable behaviour. We find this strange when the careers of these ‘millennials’ is dependent upon the views and perceptions of their more senior colleagues.

Research by TalentSmart suggests Millennials suffer from lower awareness of the impact their behaviour on others.  This is a key issue for millennials if they really do want to advance up the career ladder.  They don’t seem to realise that their unnecessary use of gadgetry is actually harming their careers.

Research Findings

Generally, more senior people (who are probably i Generation X or Baby Boomer generation) find the excessive use of smartphones and other tech to be inappropriate.
What happens then when you take out your phone in meetings?  Research suggests that it is:
  • Disrespectful to your colleagues because paying attention to your phone indicates that you think that it is more important than the work you are undertaking with others in the meeting. You have prioritised what is happening outside the meeting as being more important than what is happening in the ‘here and now’.
  • Failure to maintain attention.  You are constantly distracted and unable to demonstrate any discipline to maintain focused on what is happening there and then.
  • You aren’t displaying empathy, the key to all communication.  If you are constantly distracted, how can you pay any attention or actively listening, indicating that you not paying attention to those around you.
  • You are not in control. Technology is changing your behaviour for the worse. You are constantly distracted by the ‘stimulus response’ created by the buzz of your phone.
  • Poor self-awareness and personal judgment. You don’t understand the implications of your behaviour on others and how you present yourself publically.
  • Take a good look in the mirror and consider how your default behaviour impacts others in the team.

Short Attention Span

So, what is the impact of this behaviour if it becomes commonplace in the business? It is not surprising that this negatively impacts how people think and feel about solving problems, especially if they are important issues. These sets of behaviour create an incredibly short attention span thus interrupting the ‘testing’ and ‘rumination’ phase associated with people and teams who are prone to generate creative ideas.

Cultural Change

So where does this leave us?  It leaves us with some interesting issues and questions about how different generational groups can learn to work together.  It tells us that we need to assess the key conflicts that reside between the generations.
 
You might like to read this article that I had published a few years ago “Millennials:  Researching the Application of Demographics to Build Customer Relationships and an HR Strategy”. 
 
It’s about how organisations can better plan to employ Millennials as staff and as customers or end users.  What separates the baby boomers, Generation x and Y and Millennials is a set of values which need to be resolved if all of the organisation is going to work well together in the future.

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‘Without Leadership there is no Change’

16/11/2016

 
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We have seen a lot of interesting changes in the last few years that will have a major impact on our organisations in the private and public sector.  The Indy Ref and the changes under way in Scotland are the tip of the iceberg compared to the implications of Brexit, the US elections and, possibly, IndyRef2.

Until Leadership Behaviour Changes – Nothing Changes

Our organisations, especially our public services, need to be led by clarity of direction out of ‘change overwhelm’ to change certainty.  This transition will not be granted by the ‘tooth fairy’ or happen by accident.  It has to be a resilient purposeful course of action based on replacing administrative proficiency with strong leadership behaviours. So as you can imagine, I was really looking forward to finding some answers to the culture of ‘uncertainty’ by attending a well-publicised MACKAY HANNAH conference entitled ‘Scotland’s Public Services: What’s Coming Next’ - with three key strands:
  1. The next five years – what do we know?
  2. Preparing for the unexpected
  3. Harnessing opportunity
The conference, which was held at the prestigious Edinburgh offices of Morton Fraser, was ably chaired by Sarah Boyak and had quality speakers including Sir Paul Grice, Lynda Towers, Alex Bell, Andy Mciver, Don Peebles, Mark Taylor, Diarmaid Lawlor, Andrew Kerr and Gary Devlin, all experts in analysis of organisations in the public sector.
​ 

I am curious and want to know how the level of thinking needs to change so as to take us to the next level of service to others and performance.  I am aware that the level of thinking that got us to where we are today will have to change radically to get to where we need to be.  We need expansive, creative thinking, decisiveness and bravery that will get us out from our collective ‘stuckness’ and develop strategies for change that deliver.

Accelerating Change
 

Delegates talked about the dizzying rate of change and the importance of vision and leadership.  Although Leadership was talked about a great deal, there did not seem to be a shared strategy of how to bring it about, which is highly frustrating!
The conference was great, but it would have been even better to have workshops devoted less to theory and more to policy implementation – but we did not have the time.

To me it seemed to be a missed opportunity to talk about challenging from the current position that many organisations find themselves in from change-overwhelm fear and inertia, to actively leading out of the chaos.  I guess this is just one start of many.

My belief is that we have to shape the future and that means questioning how we do things, taking a good look in the mirror and becoming focused on building resilient cultures that can weather rapid change, are focused with clarity on our end users whether they be customers, clients, citizens, or users and start leading rather than just talking about the process.

Here I have very short video on Leadership which may interest you, and a reasoned article published on Leadership unsurprisingly entitled ‘Without Leadership there is No Change’.  I would love to know what you are thinking so please respond and we can be part of the change process in shaping the future of our Nation and its organisations.
Here’s the video and the article below.

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Email Philip Atkinson

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    Philip Atkinson is a strategic advisor, trainer, mentor and author of books and articles on organizational change and leadership

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