Business Insight Zone

That’s my simplistic paraphrase of Dan Markovitz’s good post:

Myth #3: “I’m in the service business. I *have to* respond immediately.”

To echo Dan: No, you don’t. Don’t be the monkey of your customers or your inbox. Get your real work done instead, and you’ll come out just fine. While you’re at it, don’t miss Dan’s smart comment to a post I made last week, in which he contrasts the old-school approach of CEOs to the overconnected world we now inhabit.

If you think about the office of a stereotypical executive in the 1950s or 1960s, he had the phone off to the side of his desk, and a month-at-a-glance calendar right in the middle. He realized that he needed to see where he was going in order to be effective.

When we keep our email inbox front and center all the time, we’re doing the equivalent of keeping the phone in the middle of the desk — which is great if you’re a phone operator for QVC, but not so good if you’re trying to run a business.

This reminds me that Warren Buffett doesn’t have a computer, much less Internet access, in his office at Berkshire Hathaway. While I’m at it, Richard Branson has built up Virgin Group without ever personally using the Internet at all. And I’d say he’s got a pretty good grip on the whole customer-service concept.