Spark Serendipity – Meet Face to Face

I’m currently reading the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson for our Shiraz Literary Society. (Yes, we do drink wine). I didn’t realize that Jobs had the Pixar Animation Studio building designed in a specific way so that employees were forced to meet each other regularly. Pixar Studios produced block buster hits Toy Story 1, 2 and 3, Cars, Finding Nemo and Monsters University.

I found it ironic that the man who was instrumental in developing computers, iPhones, and iPads was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. Isaacson quotes Jobs as saying “There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘WOW’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”

The Wall Street Journal agreed with Jobs. Joe Mullich (www.online.wsj.com) stated that “research informs us that when a company reduces its travel budget, it loses both revenue and profits, giving competitors a real advantage.” He goes on to say “conference calls, email, texting and video conferences, social networks and other forms of communication are all crucial elements in building and maintaining business relationships. However, none of them captures the impact of meeting with someone face-to-face.”

Albert Mehrabian found that "the verbal component of a face-to-face conversation is less than 35% and that over 65% of communication is done non-verbally".^[1] Non-verbal communication includes body posture, gestures, facial expressions and eye movements. Face-to-face meetings allow you to tap into that 65% non-verbal communication.

Emails can often be misinterpreted. You aren’t there to see the confused look on someone’s face, or that they have suddenly become annoyed by what you said. Face-to-face, you can easily read people’s reaction to what you said and quickly respond to their concerns.

An email doesn’t give you the opportunity to shake someone’s hand, talk about their family or hobbies and generally get to know them well. Face-to-face allows more of a social connection and sharing of ideas. As Jobs says, if you don’t promote encounters with people, “you’ll lose a lot of innovation and the magic that’s sparked by serendipity.”

Having retired from the business world a while ago, it delights me to know that people still respond better to meeting socially for business. I know for the groups that I’m a member of; having regular get-togethers promotes camaraderie and sharing of ideas.

It has also been shown in several studies that face-to-face meetings were more effective for making group decisions than computer mediated communications.

In his book, Isaacson quotes John Lassiter, the chief creative officer at Pixar, “Steve’s theory (designing the building so people had to meet each other regularly) worked from day one, I kept running into people I hadn’t seen for months. I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.”

You don’t have to construct a building to achieve collaboration and creativity, just meet face-to-face.

1.Pease, A., & Pease, B. (2004). The Definitive Book of Body Language: How to read others' thoughts by their gestures. Buderim, Australia: Pease International.

Mary Anthes is a retired business owner, speaker and a Distinguished Toastmaster. She can be reached at nmanthes@shaw.ca