The cellphone is in combat zones overseas. There are many implications to this.

I will not tell you about poor me waiting six weeks to get a letter when we were on ship off the coast of Somalia nor will I well you about the couple of dollars a minute phone calls we made back in the 80s. Keeping in touch is great but maintaining distance when in combat is good too. But this is not relevant to you.

In the last week I KNOW you have been in a store where you were waiting for service and the clerk was busy texting and not paying attention to you. While this isn’t rampant on the battlefield the potential for distraction exists. But what about your employees? What are they doing with this mobile communications capability and how might it negatively impact your business?

We already know the customer service issues..what about productivity? It is tough for me to get my job done if I am texting my BFF (best friend forever) all the time. I also realize we don’t want to impose harsh restrictions on the use of the cellphone. Where is the balance in your office? Is there any? Have you even had this conversation with your staff?

What about distractions? If you have an employee in the middle of an important task and they get distracted by a personal cellphone call what are the implications there? Perhaps they skip a critical step and something bad happens later.

The safety impacts are well known.Texting while driving is the equivalent of DUI but people do it all the time. Have you had that conversation with your people?

As a leader I think you have a professional and personal obligation to raise the issue and have a conversation. While this is not the most important thing you will do today it is not unimportant.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 20th, 2011 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.