N. Raghuraman's column: 'Electric meetings' are monotonous, serious and less fun

"My conversations with Raghu sir on topics like the thought process of the employees, strategies to be implemented, planning and training were always serious, but on a recent trip, I had the funniest moments with him. In a voice note to his chairman, Ashish Dutta, who is one of the 22 top professionals of a Bhopal-based company with whom I visited Sri Lanka this week, said. "I will never forget the moments I spent with him in the back seat of the tourist bus. "I have been talking to Ashish for almost five years. In these five years, I was like that, but Ashish found only the last meeting fun – that too abroad. I wondered why that? But then I realized that in the last five years, he had 'electric meetings' with me in his cabin. Wondering what these electric meetings are? Brad Jacobs, the billionaire CEO of building products distributor QXO, has dedicated an entire chapter of his book to 'Electric Meetings'. He says that most meetings are extremely monotonous and filled with passive listeners, like cut-outs made of human-sized cardboard on chairs. "On the contrary, distraction-free meetings are interesting. "It's satisfying when two dozen colleagues are really listening to you," Jacobs said at a meeting at Goldman Sachs. Not only Jacobs, many CEOs have warned time and again that just paying attention to the meeting agenda and responding to emails and WhatsApp does not make the conversation in meetings enjoyable. For example, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said of meetings with his employees last week that "most employees in the meeting were unfocused and were busy texting on the phone." "I text, but people start texting me just by looking at me. It's a big social problem. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon wrote in his annual letter to investors this April that "looking at the phone in a meeting is a waste of time and distracts." This week, she also reiterated at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit, "If they have an iPad in front of them and it looks like they're reading emails or looking at notifications, I say turn it off." UC Health Vice President Brad Fickler is considering a lighter-than-usual corporate version similar to the "Swire Jar." A swer jar is a container in which people have to put the fine amount if they abuse even after taking an oath. He wants to call it a 'phone jar' and will take a penalty if the phone is seen in the meeting. "Such rules will make meetings more like a game and eventually fun," says Fixler. In some meetings, bosses are asking colleagues to turn the phone upside down. Some HR software companies have been successful in self-policing, where they say to each other 'Hey, you don't seem to be in a meeting, but somewhere else.' "To put it simply, office rules are slowly changing. Earlier, bosses wanted all employees to be connected at all times to respond to their messages. Today they are not unaware of the fact that employees can also be busy interacting with clients. This has now become the dominant way of meeting, especially when the boss himself is taking the meeting. And I also wanted to tell Ashish that I didn't change, but on that trip they were without a phone – which made our conversation fun. The trick is that the problem isn't the phone, but that someone spends a lot of time just staring at the phone. This makes the meeting monotonous.