The 49ers Have Changed The Way They Run Meetings To Cater To "Millennials" Who Need To Check Their Phones

WSJ – The 49ers coaching staff, led by new head coach Jim Tomsula, realized that they are dealing with the same problem as millions of parents, even if they are dealing with massive, athletic millionaires. The issue is how to relate to a generation—generally described as 18-to-34-year-olds—that has been raised on smartphones and instant information. So the team consulted with experts ranging from Stanford University researchers to advertising executives to learn how, exactly, the young brain works. As players arrived for voluntary workouts and minicamps this spring and summer, they noticed sweeping changes designed to cater to how research shows millennials learn. That means making concessions for people with shorter attention spans, a desire to multitask and, yes, a need to check their phones all the time. Facing this new reality, the 49ers turned the typical meeting, which on some teams can go for as long as two hours, into 30-minute blocks, each followed by 10-minute breaks that allow players to do what young people do. That is, as Tomsula puts it, to “go grab your phone, do your multitasking and get your fix” before returning the meeting.  Another change involves sending alerts to players’ calendars instead of a printed schedule. Coaches were fearful of this move at first. In football, missing a meeting is a grave offense; now you’re introducing the chance that a technological bug could cause a player to miss one? But after a few weeks of meetings, which are used in the NFL to discuss strategy and review film, that concern has proved unfounded. No one has missed anything.

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Few things here. 1) I’m so sick of the word “millennial” being used in a negative connotation. It’s just what old people say, the same way their parents didn’t want them listening to that darned rock n roll music. Well guess what? It’s an acquired skill to be able to look at 5 screens at the same time. To be able to drive while reading Twitter. To have 2 TVs running simultaneously while reading Twitter on your phone and scrolling through the internet on your computer, while still holding a conversation with your roommates. It’s just the reality of 2015. It’s no different than how every other generation has advanced and adjusted.

So obviously the 49ers are miles ahead of other teams by adjusting to the younger generation. I wouldn’t even call it “catering”. Because catering implies you are doing something that hurts someone just to benefit them- what the Niners are doing is just using research to make things more optimal. It’s always silly to me when teams, companies, organizations, etc want to keep things the same “because that’s the way it’s always been”. That’s just an ignorant reason to not make things the best they can be. Like why would you still use pen and paper as a playbook when you can upload a video of the play so players can literally see the play in motion? Why wouldn’t you set your players up with phones with all their schedules programmed in with reminders going off? Everything a team can do to make sure everything runs smoother they should absolutely do. Old geezers can keep thinking their old-school methods work, but they’ll just keep falling further behind the curve while smart teams adjust to the current year and will show improvements because of it.