Sleeping with Your Smartphone - by Leslie A Perlow (Hardcover)

About the Book

Does it "have" to be this way?
Can't resist checking your smartphone or mobile device? Sure, all this connectivity keeps you in touch with your team and the office--but at what cost?
In "Sleeping with Your Smartphone," Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow reveals how you can disconnect and become more productive in the process. In fact, she shows that you can devote more time to your personal life "and" accomplish more at work.
The good news is that this doesn't require a grand organizational makeover or buy-in from the CEO. All it takes is collaboration between you and your team--working together and making small, doable changes.
What started as an experiment with a six-person team at The Boston Consulting Group--one of the world's elite management consulting firms--triggered a global initiative that eventually spanned more than nine hundred BCG teams in thirty countries across five continents. These teams confronted their nonstop workweeks and changed the way they worked, becoming more efficient and effective.
The result? Employees were more satisfied with their work-life balance and with their work in general. And the firm was better able to recruit and retain employees. Clients also benefited--often in unexpected ways.
In this engaging book, Perlow takes you inside BCG to witness the challenges and benefits of disconnecting. She provides a step-by-step guide to introducing change on your team--by establishing a collective goal, encouraging open dialogue, ensuring leadership support--and then spreading change to the rest of your firm.
If you and your colleagues are grappling with the "always on" problem, it's time to disconnect--and start reading.

Book Synopsis

Does it have to be this way?

Can't resist checking your smartphone or mobile device? Sure, all this connectivity keeps you in touch with your team and the office--but at what cost?

In Sleeping with Your Smartphone, Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow reveals how you can disconnect and become more productive in the process. In fact, she shows that you can devote more time to your personal life and accomplish more at work.

The good news is that this doesn't require a grand organizational makeover or buy-in from the CEO. All it takes is collaboration between you and your team--working together and making small, doable changes.

What started as an experiment with a six-person team at The Boston Consulting Group--one of the world's elite management consulting firms--triggered a global initiative that eventually spanned more than nine hundred BCG teams in thirty countries across five continents. These teams confronted their nonstop workweeks and changed the way they worked, becoming more efficient and effective.

The result? Employees were more satisfied with their work-life balance and with their work in general. And the firm was better able to recruit and retain employees. Clients also benefited--often in unexpected ways.

In this engaging book, Perlow takes you inside BCG to witness the challenges and benefits of disconnecting. She provides a step-by-step guide to introducing change on your team--by establishing a collective goal, encouraging open dialogue, ensuring leadership support--and then spreading change to the rest of your firm.

If you and your colleagues are grappling with the "always on" problem, it's time to disconnect--and start reading.

Review Quotes

"Ms. Perlow's advice should be taken seriously" -- The Economist

"The great thing about Harvard Business School Professor Perlow's book is that she makes it clear that companies can actually change the way they work and break the 24/7 habit." -- Huffington Post

"Our refusal to break from work often actually reduces our effectiveness and can even lead to burnout. How can you learn to let go? In Sleeping with your Smartphone, Leslie Perlow suggests that part of a leader's job is to teach his or her team to manage boundaries between work and private life. Disconnecting really is the solution: the workaholic consultants at Boston Consulting Group are proof. They made the decision to disconnect from work at given times, reviewed their work methods, and found ways to work and live better!" -- Business Digest (France)

"A well-presented book with lots of practical tips for the workaholics! Even if change cannot be achieved at the organisation level you still get the sense that by making some small changes to how you work you can achieve a better home-work life balance." -- BCS - The Chartered Institute for IT

"Perlow proves that we do not have to be hostages to our everyday devices - advice that is needed now more than ever." -- Business Executive

"So if you are looking for a way to be more effective as a manager, or team leader, turn off your phone and read Sleeping with Your Smartphone." -- The Chronicle Herald

"Sleeping with Your Smartphone, should be required reading for any senior executive concerned about the dysfunctionality of "always-on" connectivity." -- The Observer (UK)

"Sleeping with Your Smartphone provides excellent, proven principles for how to bring change into an existing corporate culture and how to empower employees to join in the fight to make the company better." -- Examiner.com

"If you're looking for a book title that captures the frazzled, anxious life of executives who are too worried about work to ever unplug, you probably couldn't do better than Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow's new book, Sleeping With Your Smartphone." -- The Globe and Mail

"Leslie Perlow makes a strong case that you do not have to sleep with your smartphone, at least not every night." -- Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"Sleeping With Your Smartphone will enlighten any team trying to sync among themselves while questioning the worthwhile of on-demand accessibility." -- Business Insider

ADVANCE PRAISE for Sleeping with Your Smartphone:

"Professionals of all kinds complain about the difficulty of balancing life and work, but no one has had much insight about how to fix the problem...until Leslie Perlow went out and did it. This book should be required reading for every consultant, manager, HR professional, and working parent with a demanding career." -- Chip Heath, coauthor, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

"Leslie Perlow has given us a modern masterpiece, the only book that really shows how to harness those irresistible electronic intruders that now invade our lives. Sleeping with Your Smartphone is packed with evidence and specific, useful steps for building productive and creative workplaces that bolster rather than destroy our sanity and humanity." -- Robert I. Sutton, professor, Stanford University; author, Good Boss, Bad Boss

"Leslie Perlow, one of today's leading experts in how organizations really function, has applied her prowess to a question that bedevils every professional: what impact does working harder and longer have on our achievements and our happiness? The answers in this marvelous book reveal that keeping our lives in balance is more important than we ever imagined--for ourselves and our organizations." -- Clayton M. Christensen, author, How Will You Measure Your Life?

"Who doesn't want to build more effective and engaged teams? Sleeping with Your Smartphone illustrates counterintuitive insights and practical actions to 'get it all done' in our multitasking, hyperconnected world. The book shows how teams can improve work-life balance and increase company engagement while upping their output--all with a few small, doable steps." -- Sara LaPorta, Senior Vice President, PepsiCo

"Sleeping with Your Smartphone challenges the current belief that 24/7 is required for success and that we are hostages to our devices. Leslie Perlow's strategy is brilliant because it proves that we can improve the way we live and work...by disconnecting." -- Kristin C. Peck, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Business Development & Innovation, Pfizer Inc.

"Truly inspiring! Sleeping with Your Smartphone shows that even in the most high-pressure environments, it is possible to disconnect and become more productive as a result. I am looking forward to implementing the strategy with my own teams." -- Deborah Ellinger, former President, Restoration Hardware

About the Author

Leslie Perlow is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School. She is the author of the books Finding Time (2007) and When You Say Yes But Mean No (2003).