The Smartphone is the Most Important Tool Your Business Owns
Yesterday, I picked up the latest iPhone and continue to be impressed with the functionality and how the smartphone is the centerpiece of all of my devices and that it's of paramount importance to have a good one. The smartphone consistently holds a very bad reputation in the world of disrupting sleep cycles; mistaken prioritization during moments of intellectual depth or focus; distracting us during moments where attention span was necessary. The smartphone has seemingly become an overall bother to us getting work done and being safe while driving a car or watching our children. I have not seen any articles championing the effects of having a world of information at our fingertips with seemingly magical ability to contact anyone we want, either directly or through a social media platform.
I've seen a lot of marketing and sales, but no sincere benefits. All of us users have considered at some point that there are tradeoffs (whether we consider them personally significant or not) to having this portable technology at our fingertips. We are able to track loved ones and have a feeling of security that as long as they have their phones, they can contact us if they are in any type of trouble. We know plane schedules, delays, and cancellations among dozens of other significant things to reduce our collective worry. Paired with smartwatches we can pay even closer attention to our personal health and sleep cycles, and don't get me started on how important it is to blend the daily schedule with work and home life.
Let's Explore Benefits
There is no better tool that I own or could promote that is as multifaceted for helping my business (and my life) than the phone in my pocket. Why is it so important?
Connectivity - My clients (and family) can contact me whenever they want to through email, text, or a call, and I have a way to immediately get back to them without needing to be in the office or at a computer.
Traveling - GPS helps me find my clients and hotels, while the travel and restaurant apps help me find places to stay and eat, while I'm in a foreign location.
Learning - So many videos and learning apps, so little time.
Photos - As a way to remember people, locations, products, and anything remarkable. I find myself looking at pictures and videos of my family to relax me during a flight.
Networking - Staying on top of the game through social media and email
Searching - Looking up facts, surfing, or simply getting more information on any topic you want to be prepared to speak about.
Decompressing - Music, games, puzzles, video, and a million other ways to distract you when you actual NEED the distraction.
Shopping - Apps like Amazon are making life so easy to purchase things we need and get them to where we need them with ease. On multiple occasions I have purchased things for courses and had them waiting for me when I arrived at the hotel.
Creativity - Open your imagination to what you can create - music, video, photo, podcasts, and obviously much more.
Advice
Some personal advice for entrepreneurs - get one of the best phones on the market - it's your most important tool and you should be using it. With dozens of apps and connectivity, we are able to help stay connected to our workforce and customers like no other time in history, and you should make sure you're part of that movement.
Do genuine face-to-face conversations matter more? Of course they do. Whether it's an employee, supervisor, customer or family, face-to-face is always the best option and should not be more important than digital communication if you. can avoid it. Smartphones are a necessity, so we should be using them smartly; as we would any other tool. So many articles and videos exist on how or why smartphones are changing your habits with dopamine hits and loss of focus, that we can be lulled into forgetting the importance of smartphones and other digital devices in our businesses.
Communicating
Texting has been dominating the communication realm with a chance to send a quick message to a lot of people, or in a more personal way. It also helps us to have a searchable log of the conversations where something you may want to look back on in the future will be available. This of course is not brand new, but it is recent. Pick up a business book (or any book on communication) in your personal or local library and if it is over ten years old how relevant do you think it still is to the way we are doing business today?
Watch Closely
You may have heard that people don't change, but we are all evolving, whether we like it or not. If we don't like it, when we are gone, future generations will have already forgotten our outdated thinking, so it's time to catch up and be part of it. I myself am excited for the chance to get to know my phone better and how it can help my business. I just picked up an iWatch, as well, with the hopes that it improves my life in some way and I get a return on my investment.
Sticking with the Old Tenets
I have said in my training courses for many years that Human Performance Improvement is about two things: reinforcing desired behaviors, and improving communications - anyway you can. Everything in this improvement realm should be used with intention. I fell that the smartphone is part of this improvement, and it is a very present ("future is now") type of thing.
Teach Yourself and Be Responsible
So do it - spend some quality time on your smartphone getting to know it better and don't feel guilty about it. Follow some of these basic rules when using your phone and you should be okay:
Get a holder with a charger for your phone so you can see the GPS at a good angle when you drive and have the GPS set up before you drive away.
Have another person in the car send that text for you or read the one that came in if it can't wait. If you are alone, whomever sent it, would want you to be safe and wait.
It is almost always more polite to keep your phone in your pocket than to put it on the table at any meal. Don't make the person or people you are with (especially your children) feel like they are not the priority at the meal.
I am interested to hear any rules your team or family have come up with regarding cellphone usage?
No Extra or Imbedded Links
There are purposefully no links with this post because there are HUNDREDS of easy to find studies, videos, and articles each with disparaging remarks about where cell phone tech has taken the human race. We came to this place willingly, and we are still seeking for more speed and more connectivity. I am not sure what is coming next, but when you think of the invention of the car and how it replaced the horse - this allowed us to travel longer distances to wherever there was a road or path at greater speeds - we were no longer trapped to the train destinations. It made the world smaller and made us all as a human race more connected than ever before... and then flight... and any other major invention that has ever been introduced to mankind.
We get to choose what we make of it - good and bad, collectively. Just because one of us drives our car without texting or emailing, doesn't mean they won't get in an accident with someone ignoring the responsibilities that come with this power.