Many years ago, I was looking after the Far East division for a global IT company as an in-house lawyer. I enjoyed foreign travel and had already been to Singapore and Malaysia. Then in connection with some contract or other a senior finance person almost ordered me to “get on a plane” to Asia and sort it out.
As it happened it was not a very material contract and there was no point in having a face to face meeting in the context of the other priorities the department had. So, I didn’t go and though it caused some internal strife it was the right decision.
More recently working on one very large and one very small contract negotiation in parallel I had a similar choice of travelling albeit only into London by train – no planes involved – for a meeting on the smaller contract. I realised this was the wrong call (only very early in the morning of the meeting), stayed put and worked on the more significant transaction, dialling into the other meeting – which only went on for a short time as it happened.
Making this sort of call is about prioritising the many demands made of us in our working days as we receive floods of emails, IM’s, calls and meeting requests, but is particularly pertinent to business travel and commuting which take a toll on all of us, even when we can now work quite seamlessly on planes and trains.
This article from the University of Surrey, A darker side to hypermobility concludes that whilst aspects of glamorization in regard to mobility are omnipresent in our lives, there exists an ominous silence with regard to its darker side. It discusses the benefits and challenges of transport glamorization – what I call the “get on a plane at all costs” mentality.
And it’s not just about the potential stress of travel, it’s the time wasted in airport lounges and on commuter trains or in motorway rush hour traffic jams. This blog calculates that UK commuters spend over half of their lives commuting and comments that There is increasing evidence that [commuting] adversely affects our psychological and physical health – even after we account for the increased wages and larger home that commuting further may allow us to obtain.
All of this when the technology for audio and video conferencing and Skype meetings advances rapidly and allows global participation in meetings without leaving your home or local office.
And actually, the forgotten art of writing clearly and concisely still works and sometimes the right email with the correct attachment moves things forward more than the call or meeting where egos come into play. As Francis Bacon said: Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Anyway, in the future if technology advances at its current pace we may be able to send our avatar or look alike robot to a meeting whilst we head off for the beach, thus avoiding travel or commuting, or even working, in the first place!
As it happened it was not a very material contract and there was no point in having a face to face meeting in the context of the other priorities the department had. So, I didn’t go and though it caused some internal strife it was the right decision.
More recently working on one very large and one very small contract negotiation in parallel I had a similar choice of travelling albeit only into London by train – no planes involved – for a meeting on the smaller contract. I realised this was the wrong call (only very early in the morning of the meeting), stayed put and worked on the more significant transaction, dialling into the other meeting – which only went on for a short time as it happened.
Making this sort of call is about prioritising the many demands made of us in our working days as we receive floods of emails, IM’s, calls and meeting requests, but is particularly pertinent to business travel and commuting which take a toll on all of us, even when we can now work quite seamlessly on planes and trains.
This article from the University of Surrey, A darker side to hypermobility concludes that whilst aspects of glamorization in regard to mobility are omnipresent in our lives, there exists an ominous silence with regard to its darker side. It discusses the benefits and challenges of transport glamorization – what I call the “get on a plane at all costs” mentality.
And it’s not just about the potential stress of travel, it’s the time wasted in airport lounges and on commuter trains or in motorway rush hour traffic jams. This blog calculates that UK commuters spend over half of their lives commuting and comments that There is increasing evidence that [commuting] adversely affects our psychological and physical health – even after we account for the increased wages and larger home that commuting further may allow us to obtain.
All of this when the technology for audio and video conferencing and Skype meetings advances rapidly and allows global participation in meetings without leaving your home or local office.
And actually, the forgotten art of writing clearly and concisely still works and sometimes the right email with the correct attachment moves things forward more than the call or meeting where egos come into play. As Francis Bacon said: Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Anyway, in the future if technology advances at its current pace we may be able to send our avatar or look alike robot to a meeting whilst we head off for the beach, thus avoiding travel or commuting, or even working, in the first place!
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