Not too long ago, the overworked modern day CEO and his Blackberry made an inseparable couple. Now, as this select tribe of BB addicts is joined by millions of smartphone junkies at all levels, India Inc’s attention deficit is only likely to worsen. Vikas Kumar outlines a few lessons from those who have figured out a ‘smart’ way to work their phones.
Exercise your options
Forget the emails. There’s plenty to get busy with these days. Sudhir Sharma, founder of Pune-based INDI Design says newer BB models come with settings that allow only phone call alerts. So you needn’t check every time an email or SMS pings on your handset. “You can choose if you want to be disturbed by email alerts,” he says. Twitter and Facebook seem to have have taken over in terms of urgency. Of course much of that depends on the kind of work you do. But for those who’d rather be keeping abreast of what others across the world are doing or saying, the arrival of a fresh tweet is of utmost importance. So you could do what Sharma does -- carry a tablet for indulging in such diversions. The iPad in fact makes for a richer social networking experience, some say.
Keep it simple
Many people use two phones. So the iPhone is meant for calls and the BB for official emails. “That’s my strategy.” says Nishchae Suri, managing director for Mercer in India. “When I joined Hewitt (my previous company) I was given a BB. It was the first model introduced in India then. I never carried my BB home with me, except when I travelled. Now I need to be on my email much more than I used to 10 years ago. But if you can, one strategy is to put it in your drawer, and not take it home,” he says.
Set your rhythm and limits
Companies surely aren’t going to tell you how to manage your BB. So self-regulation is the best regulation there is. “There can be no organisational mandate on the use of smartphones — individuals will need to set their own pace of work,” says Sameer Suneja, MD of confectionery major Perfetti Van Melle India, who also owns an iPhone. Speciality Restaurants' founder Anjan Chatterjee, who is better known for the Mainland China and Oh! Calcutta restaurant chains, keeps his BB on silent once he's home, and says only five people know of another number where they can reach him in times of serious need or emergency.
Do unto others….
Setting your own limits also means respecting others’ limits. “I will send an email at a time that suits me. But when I send it outside office hours I do no expect a reply outside office hours. If it's very urgent I send an SMS as well. I'd expect the same to be accorded to me,” says Suneja. He adds that appraisals too shouldn’t take into account how direct reports respond to emails on weekends but rather on the quality of their work output.
Surrender to meetings
It’s what senior executives find the most annoying about internal meetings — the sight of some attendees busily attending to their phones rather than the matters at hand. Chatterjee says mobile phones need to be surrendered before a meeting. Suneja agrees: “Laptops and mobile phones are banned (in meetings). If we've got good brains together we should put them to good use.”
(03-05-2011, Mumbai, The Economic Times)
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