Why tech-less meetings should be your goal

Do laptops and smartphones hijack your company meetings? Do employees spend time checking e-messages, tweeting their friends and scanning news headlines rather than paying attention to your plan to boost profits? Well, you’re not alone. Technology has impaired many a work meeting.

Turn off the tech

Jake Knapp, has a answer for you. He’s a design partner with Google Ventures. And in a recent column for the Medium Web site, Knapp suggests bosses forbid employees from dragging technology into meetings. Bosses who do this will dramatically boost the actual amount of work that gets done during these meetings.

Bye-bye tablets

Knapp advocates that meeting attendees not be permitted to bring their laptops, smartphones, tablets, or even their smart watches into meetings. That way, they’ll be ready to concentrate on what you’re explaining, not what’s blinking on a screen in front of them.

A timer

Of course, bosses have to make concessions, too. Knapp proposes that bosses set up a timer that everyone in the meeting can see. Once the timer beeps, the meeting is finished. This stands no matter what.