Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Multi-tasker, Big Distracter
Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.
A friend of mine has had to tell attendees that they can only bring paper notepads and pens to his meetings. No PDAs, laptops, cell phones or other distracting devices are permitted.
The reason? Many of the people in attendance have demonstrated that they are not focused on the meeting--they are too busy text messaging friends, playing online games and, although it might be considered a more positive alternative, doing work on other company projects. Disguising their keyboarding activities as diligent note-taking, these conferees are quickly exposed by roaming presenters who are watchful of magician-quality sleight of hand actions and the flicker of screens as they wink to other applications. But the fact of the matter is that we shouldn’t need to have meeting cops keeping an eye out for this abuse.
It’s not just the flesh-and-bone visitors that are guilty of this subterfuge, either. Dial-in and other kinds of remote users are more flagrant in their disregard for manners. Isolated from the rest of the meeting group, they often drift off to perform other functions and frequently only get pulled back into the discussion when their expertise is being requested. You can tell they are inattentive by virtue of their questions: “Could you repeat that again, please?” or “I’m sorry, would you mind going over that one more time?&…
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"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." - Orson Welles, The Third Man |