Casino Time in Conference Rooms

While spending a weekend a few years ago at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, I toured a huge, Cold War-era bunker nearby. Built in the 1960s to shelter Congress in the event of a nuclear attack, the now-declassified facility was designed to employ elaborate psychological measures to keep surviving legislators rooted in outside reality in case of an extended underground stay. One key to preserving reality was the use of large wall clocks in every conference room, dormitory, and office. Without them and the cues to the outside world they provided, the tour guide told us, people lost their bearings, and a form of paranoia and fear tended to emerge in test stays in the facility. (Not that people surviving a nuclear attack would have anything to fear, would they?)

I'm struck by what a contrast those rooms were to most agency conference rooms I've been in. In the typical communications firm, there's not a clock to be found anywhere. What about yours? It's almost as if the same architects who design casinos also create conference rooms for agencies. As you probably know, casinos traditionally have had no clocks, no windows, and few other links to the outside world. It's no accident. Prevailing wisdom holds that casinos rake in more cash if they maintain a timeless, consequence-less fantasy atmosphere for their customers. If gamblers see clocks, casino owners reason, they might notice the time of day. And if they did, they might decide it was time to stop tossing their money away and move on to more productive things.

Why on earth would a communications agency want to follow this path? I personally can't see how insulating clients and staff from time, consequences, and reality could lead to better communication initiatives. I'm pretty certain that it makes for longer, less productive meetings. I'll grant that some insulation from time and logic is useful in the initial idea-development stage, to allow your people some room to explore a wide range of ideas. And some people drawn to agency life simply chafe at agendas, structure, and meeting discipline.

But particularly when the hours before the pitch deadline are winding down, when tough decisions about priorities need to be made, it's potentially catastrophic for your team to lose track of time. Pitch teams need an accurate and immediate sense of running time to get feedback on how long their individual presentations are going, in rehearsals and especially during the real thing. There's little worse than for your agency to run out of time half-way through your pitch when a client has a hard stop, especially since it cuts off the vital Q&A session. It shows a lack of preparation, professionalism, and priority-setting, not a surfeit of great ideas. And it can imply a lack of respect for the client team's time.

In short, a simple, easy-to-read, inexpensive wall clock hung prominently in every conference room can help save you many hours of wasted time and help your team win more pitches. But it might not be the easiest thing for you to sell your management on. When I made this observation to one agency exec who is well known for being incorrigibly late, the response I got was, "I don't want people watching the clock during my meetings." That exec's issue was a more fundamental disconnection, an inability to respect the needs of a team and a need to dominate others. That kind of insulation from reality no timepiece can solve.

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