Carrying laptops

Sunday, October 26th, 2008

In my entire business career, I never, ever carried a laptop. By the time they became affordable and reasonably light, I had a great Management Team and an excellent secretary. The team could run the company without me and anyway, they could reach me by phone if they really need my judgement or approval. The fax still works you know so if I had to see a document, then they could use that.

Linda went through my email everyday and dumped the real trash, say 50%. Others, requiring action, she would delegate to Team members just as I would have done if at home. The rest, which she thought I might like to read, she collated in a folder. Her judgment was excellent so on a week's trip, she'd only pass on the vital stuff to wherever I was staying or phone me and read them out to me. Typically on a week's trip, I'd get 3, maybe 4 from her.

Yes, I was lucky in that, at my time of life I had the Team and Linda. The young are clearly not so lucky and while a few can be seen beavering away, the same cannot be said for the majority. Sit in any airport lounge and look around: most seem to be in a state of transcendental meditation hitting perhaps one key every 15 seconds, if that. Same goes for on board the plane.

There's a lesson here and that is you can have too much communication. I love progress but in the days of post and fax, people had to think and filter their thoughts before passing on them to all and sundry. And when, you think about things, you often come to the conclusion that it was not important after all.

I never saw, 'Well, I sent him an email,' as an excuse and I never will.

I frequently travelled in a business suit and that made airport security staff think that I must have a laptop. So when asked at X-ray, 'Do you have a laptop?', My response was, 'Good Lord, no, I have people to carry things like that.' It often made them giggle and I smiled too.