100 Business Days Out: Day 37 - Face to Face

Today was about flying back from the east coast. Headwinds at our nose the whole way, making it a 6.5 hour flight from Boston to San Francisco. On that long flight my mind just couldn't help but wander and think and observe what was going on around me. There was business occurring all around me with a scattered crying baby or two interspersed. Walking through the plane from the back to the front the I could see a sea of open laptops and I would guess that 80% of them either had PowerPoint or their Outlook open, doing business. What this tells me is that face to face in business is far from dead. People want to go to people and no matter how hard we try with telephone and video conferencing, nothing can substitute for the sit-down face to face meeting. Travel for the face to face meetings was something I have done for all of my career and while I don't miss the hassles of the airports, the impersonal customer service of the airlines, and most of all the randomness of the TSA upon check-in, I do miss the traveling to meet face to face with employees, customers or partners. These are usually great meetings because from the onset the other party knows you made a cost, time and wear and tear decision and you are spending all of this on them. There is a built in appreciation as the foundation for the meeting to be built upon. As we find more efficiency and productivity (which we should) and technology lowers the cost and barriers for non-travel dependent interactions, we should also cherish and relish in the moments that we do get to sit down with each other in the same room and do our work. These are human moments of interaction that we should not miss the opportunity to make the most of, lest they not be there in the future.