How do you handle devices and interruptions during our session days, and what are your rules for keeping us focused when our operational fires are burning outside the room?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To get results, we must treat the session room as an isolated environment, much like being on an ice floe in the Antarctic. This is the only way to defeat the psychological resistance that pulls your attention back to daily fires. We have a strict zero-device policy during active session hours. Your laptops and phones are placed in a designated zone and only accessed during scheduled breaks. If there is a true operational emergency, we pause the entire room, but we do not allow individual drifting. I expect you to transition from acting like an owner to being an owner. This shift in identity means you trust your team to run the business for eight hours without your intervention. Before we start, you must designate a point person back at the office who knows they are only to interrupt the session for catastrophic events. The goal of this isolation is to create white space where you can actually think, reflect, and make high-impact decisions. When you eliminate distractions, you build the psychological readiness needed to tackle tough organizational issues. My expectation is total presence from every participant. If you cannot step away from your email for eight hours, you are not yet ready to run an autonomous business. We start on time, end on time, and remain completely focused on the agenda.