Boards should ban the use of BlackBerries, iPhones and all other e-mail-enabled wireless devices in their meetings. The distractions they create are undoubtedly contributing to bad decisions. This, of course, is true in meetings all across organisations. But in the case of corporate directors, failing to ban such devices may, in principle, represent a breach of their fiduciary duties to shareholders.

Wireless e-mail-enabled devices have become a common fixture in corporate boardrooms (and meetings of all kinds). Everyone has grown familiar with the routine: there is a quiet buzz, hands reach for holsters, heads and shoulders slump semi-prostrate into a “BlackBerry prayer”; and two or three minutes later the supposed guardians of shareholder interests and vigilant governance return their gaze – and their attention – to the meeting and business at hand.

Attention is a scarce resource. Indeed, some management thinkers have described it as the scarcest resource in most organisations. Splitting attention between two tasks is something people simply do not do well.