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No bit literacy from the AMA
Jun 4, 2006
A telling interview with Ed Reilly, president of the American Management Association, who certainly could gain a lot from learning bit literacy. He starts off by identifying the problem correctly. From Attention-Juggling in the High-Tech Office - New York Times:
Q. If people... are using several e-mail platforms and their cellphones and their office lines, does that fracture their attention span?
A. Absolutely. When people switch gears and move from one process to another, our brains require some amount of time to begin thinking about something else. Forget the amount of time you actually spend browsing on the Internet and reading things you don't really need to read for your job. Just the fact that you're switching back and forth means you're not organizing your time correctly.
But then he shows, like most executives, that he has no solution - that is, no bit literacy. He says that upper management needs to spend time thinking, rather than managing e-mail - as if those were mutually exclusive, rather than directly related...
If you don't properly organize your thinking and your time, you can end up concentrating on the urgent rather than the important. You can get tied up being a traffic cop in terms of answering e-mails, when in fact those things can be answered later. Management, particularly the more senior management, needs time to think.
...and finally he admits that he has no good media diet strategy, saying that since he got his Blackberry, "I don't have time to read."
Ed Reilly, if you're reading this, read my bit literacy columns and get in touch!
