Corporate road warriors

   

   By Stuart Crainer

   

   The characteristic that most distinguishes today´s executives is not their technological
   sophistication but the amount of time they spend on the move. To observe the real impact of
   globalisation, you only have to walk around an international airport. Among the crowds of
   tourists, an army of road warriors and corporate executives march red-eyed across the world´s
   time zones. Global markets mean constant global travel.

                             

   Management consultants are among the most frenetic frequent fliers. They routinely cross
   continents for a face-to-face meeting and then return home. They point to the importance of a
   personal contact. For a profession built on rational analysis, it seems illogical.
   Face-to-face meetings when one of the parties is exhausted and jet-lagged seem unlikely to
   benefit anyone. But most consultants act as if e-mail and satellite links had never been
   invented. For the masters of logic, only the face-to-face experience will do.

   

   The question is why all the technological gadgetry has failed to make a dent in the amount of
   business travel? The answer seems to lie with a simple statistic. More than 90 percent of
   human communication is nonverbal (some studies put it as high as 93 percent). Facial
   expressions, body language, eye contact – these are all key conduits. Without them you can´t
   get past first phase. It´s tough to bond over the Internet. 'Most of us still want
   face-to-face contact,' says Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at
   the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). 'A lot of people
   rely on their personalities to persuade others,' he says. 'That doesn´t come out in e-mails,
   and video conferencing is limiting. They may also want to influence people outside of the
   meeting. A lot of lobbying goes out before and after meetings. That´s why eyeball-to-eyeball
   is so important. We still don´t fully trust the technology even though it´s been around for a
   while. We prefer to talk behind closed doors.'

   

   We also read body language to pick up the atmosphere, he says. 'We walk into a meeting and
   pick up the feel of what the other people are thinking. We watch how Y reacts to what X is
   saying. You can´t do that by videoconference. Most of us don´t have the self-confidence to
   believe we can build the sorts of relationships we need with clients and suppliers down the
   wire. Business travel won´t decrease for that reason. It´s a shame because at the moment we´re
   burning out an awful lot of people.'

   From the Financial Times