Your Board
Has Lost Its Focus

By J. Patrick Traynor

If you’ve served on a board post-pandemic, you’ve maybe experienced some version of the following:

It’s 6:05. The meeting was supposed to start at 6, but only three of your board members have showed up. 

Not to worry: There’s a virtual option, and four people are on Zoom in the waiting room. At least you have a quorum.

As the Zoomers join the meeting, their faces fill the screen and you’re hit with a mix of sounds — kids screaming, dishes clanking, horns honking. Yes, one of your board members has, in fact, joined the meeting from their car. 

One of them is completely MIA — an avatar in the corner — and as you turn back to the small crowd gathered in person around the table, each person’s head is buried in either their phone or computer.

If you’re thinking I’m here to rail on virtual board meetings, I’m not.

One of the best ways to ensure this happens is simple but often overlooked: a board job description.

No, I think there’s something deeper at play here: our addiction to technology and what it’s doing to our ability to focus.

Smartphones, tablets, and computers are incredible tools. They create efficiencies, provide convenience, and help us connect in ways that were unimaginable just a couple decades ago. But we also need to acknowledge their many downsides. They’re distracting, addicting, isolating, and — as we’re now learning — contribute to a host of mental and physical health conditions ranging from depression and anxiety to obesity.

Here are a few numbers that really highlight the stranglehold that tech has on our day-to-day lives:

• About 97 percent of Americans now own a smartphone.
• American adults spend about seven hours a day on digital devices and screens.
• On average, people check their devices nearly 150 times and swipe or scroll more than a mile each day.
• One study found that office workers only focus on a task for about three minutes at a time.
• A recent study found a significant decline in IQ levels, which is affecting our ability to stick with complex tasks and lowering our capacity to make reliable decisions.

What’s the net effect of all this? Author Nicholas Carr summarizes it well:

“Spend enough time in frenetic shallowness and you can permanently reduce your capacity to do deep work.”

The exact kind of work that a board of directors is required to do — deep, complex, forward-looking — is being directly affected by digital addiction.

That’s why, over the next couple months, we’re going to help you and your fellow board members get back your focus. 

We’ll give you practical steps you can take to break free of your own tech addiction, as well as policies and guidelines you can implement within your board to ensure your meetings are distraction-free, productive, and laser-focused on the important mission you serve. 

To get started, we have some homework for you. We ask that you carve out 15-20 minutes at your next board meeting and that each member takes the free Healthy Tech Assessment below. Then, spend some time discussing your results with one another.

This isn’t meant to be a shaming exercise but rather an opportunity for you to do some honest self-reflection about whether you’re in a toxic relationship with tech.

Healthy Tech Assessment

Instructions: Download the Healthy Tech Assessment below, and then use your score to see how healthy (or unhealthy) your tech habits are.