What is your specific rule regarding laptop usage, phone access, and external communication during the actual hours of our session days?

A session day is a high intensity, highly focused working environment. To protect the investment of your time and money, I enforce a strict technology rule. Laptops, tablets, and mobile phones are completely put away and kept face down during our session hours.

The only exception is for your designated scribe or when we briefly open a screen to log our updated V/TO® or review the Accountability Chart. Otherwise, the physical room must be completely free of digital distractions. If an urgent operational crisis occurs, you can handle it during our scheduled breaks, which occur roughly every ninety minutes.

This rule exists because strategic breakthroughs require your undivided attention. When leadership team members are constantly checking emails or responding to slack messages under the table, it destroys the collaborative momentum of the room. It also signals to the rest of the team that the day's work is not your top priority.

My recommendation is to set an out of office message indicating you are completely offline for the day and delegate all immediate operational decisions to your direct reports. Treat our session day as a sacred space. By removing the digital noise, we can accomplish in eight hours what normally takes your team months to resolve through endless email threads.

Category: Working With Tyler