It is really interesting about how the Smartphone has invaded our lives. I purchased one of the first cellular phones over 30 years ago and that was big and permanently installed in my vehicle. It had a big huge handset and hard to use.
Now the phone can slip in my pocket and has about 1,000 times the functionality!
Confession
Let me be perfectly clear. I am totally hooked on my mobile phone. I don’t pretend that I would live just fine without the phone. I would not live just fine. I am have so integrated the phone in my life, I cannot imagine what life was like before it.
So I am weak and dependent on my phone.
Confession is good for the soul so I now feel better!
In another post, I will review the problems of these mobile devices (and there are many issues!).
But, for now, I want to look at the positive aspects.
Contact
I do remember the days when my family and I didn’t have mobile devices and communication between us was hard when we scattered around.
For a business, when I left the office for a meeting with a client, I was unreachable possibly for several hours before I returned to the office. We never thought about this problem as it was normal. The receptionist at the office front desk filled out the slips when people called and then I would grab the pile of slips when I walked back in the door. Very inefficient. It required the receptionist to capture the message correctly to give me a hint of how soon I need to call that person back.
Tied Down
The lack of a mobile phone kept us tied down to the office. Forget about remote work…not possible. There were great inefficiencies as running personal appointments or errands took me out of the office and away from the work.
Business opportunities were missed if I was away from the office and could not talk to a client. I went to extraordinary lengths to order my personal life so I could spend a full day at the office.
Colleagues could not reach me easily if I was not at the office (or they were away from the office).
Technical Pain
One day, when I was in charge of a hospital network, I was on vacation in another state and one of our main systems went down due to a crashed drive. My team was not clear on how to activate the redundant duplicate disk drive and come back up in a few minutes (my mistake for not getting all of that documented). Since they could not communicate with me, it took several hours before they got the server system back up and running.
If I had a cellular phone then, I could have given them the instructions on how to get this system back up on its feet very quickly.
It is a fantasy that those of us that work in technology can truly get vacations away from everyone and everything. Staying in contact via a mobile device can help with continuity.
Call Me On Vacation
I am serious. I finally ended up with instructions to my team to call me while on vacation. Not that enjoyed having my vacation interrupted but usually I could give input in a 5 minute call that would have taken hours to unwind if my team didn’t have the key information. My wife is not so excited about this method but it does make life easier for me! This does not work for everyone but it is an accommodation that works for me.
No, of course, this can be abused and I have a few rules about being contacted on vacation. Is it true emergency that you need vital info from me? Also, I don’t sit on conference calls for hours while away. But, the teams have adapted to my willingness to be contacted with a few rules.
Oh yeah, one of the rules is that I will not answer or call back immediately unless it is an urgent crisis. In that case, they text me and let me know I am needed immediately. It had better be a true, disastrous, the world is ending crisis! Or, they will have a grouchy team leader on the phone!
Assigning a Team Member
Using text messaging is a quick method of pointing a query to another team member to answer. No matter what you say, people from other teams will contact you anyway because they are used to working with you. However, you can assign one of your team to take care of the issue with minimal impact to your time.
Other teams get used to working with one person but it is critical that they be able to have others of your team provide them the info or help also.
Mobile Devices Are Liberating
I can go away on a trip with confidence that nothing major will drop without my involvement. There are many who will disagree with my methods but I have found this to be a very workable solution. Maximize time with my family yet still not have disasters when I return to work.
I don’t what works best for you but make sure you make arrangements to handle your work while away. These days, an excuse of being on vacation rarely flies with upper management!
Enjoy our time off.
Coming up in another post, I look at the problems of always having a mobile device with me!