According to Fortune, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been blunt about his disdain for employees using devices during meetings, telling them to “close the damn thing” if they appear distracted. At Fortune’s Most Powerful Women summit last month, he called the behavior disrespectful and wasteful. Meanwhile, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna takes a more nuanced approach, distinguishing between small meetings where device use is inappropriate and larger gatherings where technology serves as a useful tool. Krishna argued it would be “weird” for a tech company to ban technology use entirely. Dimon’s frustration extends beyond small meetings, recalling a recent hybrid meeting where all four remote participants were on their phones despite 12 people being physically present.
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The CEO Culture Clash
This isn’t just about texting etiquette – it’s fundamentally about how different industries view productivity and respect. Dimon comes from the high-stakes, relationship-driven world of Wall Street where every interaction matters. When you’re making billion-dollar decisions, full attention isn’t just polite – it’s business critical. Krishna leads a technology company where being connected is literally part of the job description. They’re coming at this from completely different angles.
And honestly? Both have a point. In small, strategic meetings where decisions are being made, being glued to your phone is just rude. But in those massive “all-hands” meetings that are basically one-way broadcasts? Come on. Everyone’s multitasking. The real issue might be that we’re calling too many things “meetings” when they’re really just information dumps.
The Return-to-Office Reality
Here’s the thing: Dimon’s stance on meeting behavior aligns perfectly with his aggressive return-to-office mandate. Most JPMorgan employees now work in-office five days a week, and the company just opened its $3 billion global headquarters in Manhattan. When you’re making that kind of real estate investment, you want people actually engaging with each other, not staring at screens.
Meanwhile, Krishna’s more flexible approach reflects the reality that technology enables different ways of working. IBM has been through multiple workplace evolutions – from traditional offices to remote work and back again. They understand that blanket rules often don’t account for how work actually gets done in 2024.
The Productivity Paradox
We’re all guilty of it – checking emails during meetings, sending quick texts, pretending we’re taking notes when we’re really scrolling through Instagram. But does it actually make us more productive? Or are we just fooling ourselves?
Executive coach Gary Rich makes a compelling point about the ripple effect of multitasking. When one person zones out, it demotivates everyone else. The speaker feels disrespected, other attendees lose focus, and suddenly what should have been a 30-minute meeting drags on for an hour because nobody’s fully present.
But then there’s the counterargument: With AI assistants that can generate meeting summaries, maybe we don’t need to hang on every word in every meeting. Maybe the real problem isn’t device use – it’s that we have too many unnecessary meetings in the first place.
Finding the Middle Ground
So where does this leave us? Krishna’s distinction between meeting sizes seems like the most practical approach. Small, collaborative sessions? Put the phone away. Large informational broadcasts? Do what you need to do.
The truth is, meeting etiquette needs to evolve along with workplace technology. Blanket bans feel outdated, but so does constant distraction. Maybe the solution isn’t banning devices – it’s creating meetings so valuable that people don’t want to look at their phones. Now there’s a radical idea.
