so when I was researching my book in
distractible I constantly heard of folks
telling me how the workplace is the
source of constant distraction whether
it's the fact that people work in
open-floor-plan offices or the constant
ping and ding of emails or group chat
channels one of the tools I heard
mentioned most often as people
complained about the technology that
keeps them tethered to the work was a
product called slack slack is the
world's largest group chat app and so I
decided to pay slack a visit and what I
discovered when I went to visit slack
headquarters is that slack somehow
doesn't suffer from this problem of
distraction I mean you would think if
technology was the source of the problem
if slack was causing people to get
distracted the people at slack who used
the product more than anyone on earth
should be more distracted than anyone
but that's not what I found at 6 o'clock
the office was empty and on nights and
weekends it turns out people who work at
slack are chastised if they use the
product outside of working hours well
why is that it's because technology is
not the root cause of distraction at
work then what I discovered my five
years of research is that distraction at
work is a symptom of cultural
dysfunction companies that have a
healthy workplace culture portray three
attributes first they give employees
psychological safety the ability to
raise their hand to raise concerns and
say hey something's not working out here
can we talk about this problem without
fear of retribution without fear that
they might get fired for voicing a
concern the second attribute of these
companies with a healthy workplace
culture is that they give employees a
forum to talk about their concerns so at
SLAC they actually use their own
technology to give employees this forum
they have these slack channels one of
them is called beef tweets where any
employee can post a complaint concern or
a comment about the company and company
management will acknowledge they have
seen those concerns with get this and
emoji an eye emoji or a checkmark emoji
lets employees know that their concerns
are acknowledged and being handled and
then finally and perhaps the most
important attribute of these companies
with a healthy workplace culture when it
comes to distraction you
that management displays what it means
to become indestructible they're fully
present with their employees as opposed
to being on their device during meetings
they show employees what it means to do
focused work by tuning out distraction
turning off all those external triggers
and not working 24/7 and perpetuating
this terrible cycle of responsiveness so
if we are to do our best work what we
need to acknowledge in corporate America
today is that we have to give people the
time to do reflective as opposed to
simply reactive work that reacting to
emails and meetings all day long doesn't
give people the time to have the focus
to do their best work so the lesson here
is that technology in the workplace is
not causing these problems it is nothing
but the proximal cause the real source
of the problem is a dysfunctional
workplace culture where people can't
talk about this problem of distraction
just as they can't talk about all kinds
of other problems in the workplace but
when we give employee psychological
safety a forum to talk about these
issues as well as displaying for
employees what it means to become
indestructible this is where we give
people the opportunity to do their best
work
you
