business rapidly decays in value, weakening the relationship between pay
and competence. Back in the late 1970s Bernard McGowan, a Massachusetts
ophthalmologist, bought an Apple and hired an expert at all of $5 an
hour. His consultant was a scruffy young man in an old jacket. And this
guru had himself owned an Apple only a day. But it didn’t matter. His
name was Mitch Kapor, and he was good, apparently, for he went on to
found Lotus Development Corporation, the company that developed the
best-selling 1-2-3 integrated program. Today McGowan is still using
$5-an-hour men at times. He told me, in fact, that one consultant, a
teenager digesting software manuals for him, doubled as a baby-sitter.
No, this isn’t an argument for merciless exploitation of child labor à
la nineteenth-century England. For a small businessman with a simple
task, however, and no pressing deadlines, a teenager might do well. Why
must every sixteen-year-old be flipping hamburgers around after school
at McDonald’s?
But teenage computer geniuses are special cases. Don’t count on a
$5-an-hour consultant to write up a complex accounting program that you
need done within three months to avoid bankruptcy.
Moreover, if you’re a business of any size, you might end up spending
hundreds or even thousands of dollars just to audition consultants.
That’s right; you may pay them. Canyes will talk to people by phone if
he thinks they’re good prospects, but the moment he gets in the car, the
meter starts running. That’s basically in line with what Adam Green, a
software training expert, told me. Green has conducted seminars for
big-name clients like Price Waterhouse and Xerox, and earlier he worked
as a programmer and salesman, so he’s been around. “A good consultant in
my view would come out [in many cases] and spend a day or two looking at
the operation and then give back a written proposal saying how they
could help the client,” Green said. “And then they should charge the
client about $250 for that.”
“If someone comes out and spends a day or two with you and writes
something up for free, obviously they don’t have anything better to do.
They’re not working. They’re amateurs. They don’t consider their time
worth anything.” Paying a consultant to write a proposal, you’ll learn
(1) if he can communicate in comprehensible English, (2) if he can think
logically, and (3) if he understands your business and its needs.
But maybe that’s a step or so ahead of where you now are in the game.
Having found a promising candidate, make certain you feel comfortable
with him or her. Trust your instincts. Beware of snake-oil artists who,
through greed or incompetence, may actually increase your time and
expense. People like Bob Hillard and Michael Canyes come across as
teacherlike in their eagerness to pass on their wisdom to the
appreciative. But not all consultants, in and out of computers, seem
that way. A few might not even give you a written report of their
findings. Many intimidate you through jargon, even through dress. Quite
correctly, some young business school hotshots have been depicted as
punks in pin-striped suits. “You have to know what your client wears and
dress one level above him,” said an ex-Bain and Company man. “If he
wears a sport coat, you wear a suit. If you’re meeting him in a
midwestern cornfield and he’s wearing a T-shirt, you wear a button-down.
You might actually drive to his office in beige pants, a jacket, and a
tie. But you can look in through the window when you get out of your car
and then take off as much as you have to.”[31] The consultant wasn’t in
the computer trade, but he might as well have been. One industry
magazine began a “So You Want to be a Consultant” article with a warning
against polyester.
Footnote 31:
The ex-Bain man’s quote is from _Harper’s_, November 1982.
“Well,” I asked Mark Robinson, “what about dress? Can you trust a
consultant in a three-piece suit more than one who looks like a refugee
from a university computer center?”
“It’s really irrelevant,” he said, “I’d look more at things like Can the
guy focus on the relevant features of my business? Does he seem to
understand what my business is about? This is one of the things that
probably isn’t even related to the number of years in micros or
computers or what not.” Robinson suggests asking yourself, “Does he
quickly grasp the nature of my relationships with my suppliers, my
clients, my promotion methods? Is he focusing on the technical solutions
rather than my needs first? Does he even consider a question like
whether I need a computer at all? Does he try to look at the
highest-priority needs that I have in terms of the effect on my bottom
line? Does he really have a grasp on why I might have a computer—to move
into new things and serve my customers better, to replace existing
functions, and so on? Does he know general things like that? If he
doesn’t have that sort of perspective, if he isn’t even able to back off
as to whether I should have a computer, I may be getting a slightly
different type of salesman, someone who is committed to a computer
solution, for instance, and isn’t really looking at it from my
viewpoint. He is not totally professional.” You might still use such a
person, but you’d better consider his limitations and biases.
I asked about “pure” consultants versus those selling software or
hardware.
“Most consultants,” said Robinson, “have found that small businessmen’s
budgets for pure consulting and their appreciation of it aren’t high
enough so they make enough money. So they’ve got to sell software and
hardware. And also purity means that a consultant is spread too thin.
He’s not able to specialize and know enough about a particular package
to be competent in it. So either he has a superficial view of these
packages, or else he’s a partisan.” While working as a full-time
consultant, Robinson hoped to maintain his purity. “I found myself
dealing with a lot of invoices of fairly small amounts,” he said, “and
most of my support came from contract programming.”
What with the line so thin between salesman and consultant, you should
politely but persistently ask about business connections that could sway
their judgment.
Obviously, too, you’ll want a consultant’s résumé if he or she has one.
He should. One way or another you’re after the normal personnel-office
answers—his schooling (anything that could help him understand your
business?), his previous jobs (one computer consultant ran a nightclub
once—perhaps not such a bad background for an expert dealing with small
businesses), maybe even if he has an arrest record (a perfectly suitable
question if he’s setting up an accounting system or doing security
consulting). Be polite but aggressive. By not shying away from the
basics, you’ll be reminding him who’s in charge—the client. Don’t forget
the _why_. Why is he in “consulting”? It isn’t a euphemism for
unemployment, presumably. Also, why is he working with micros rather
than mainframes? Attitude matters as much as brains and skill. Ideally,
your consultant will be comfortable with the flora and fauna outside the
antiseptic computer rooms. While he’s auditioning, see if that’s true of
him.
How do you tell? Introduce him to your people, not just your executives.
Encourage them to ask questions. If the consultant condescends toward a
secretary or clerk now, he may very well do so toward you later. And if
he rubs your people the wrong way, they may resent him in the future and
take it out on the computerization project.
Well, there’s a caveat here. Maybe the specs for the job are so
clear-cut that your consultant can work in a little corner away from the
rest of the world. With _personal_ computing, that’s not going to happen
as much as with mainframes.
In winding up the interview, ask about the future. Will the consultant
be around in the future to do work or answer questions? He won’t be? You
still might use him. But police him very carefully to make certain he’s
following standardized procedures that another consultant can pick up
on. You don’t want your business to go down the tubes when your software
man goes off to find his karma atop Mt. Fuji.
Satisfied? Then move on to references—which, if you’re a small,
budget-minded business, you might want checked before a full-fledged
audition.
Remember Stewart’s ordeal. Ask for the names of people whom the
consultant served in tasks similar to the proposed one. Request ten
names. The consultant needn’t have done—in each case—jobs like the
proposed one. Moreover, you often don’t have to call more than five or
six references. But with ten names, at least you’ll know you’re far from
the first client. Don’t, incidentally, phone just the references at the
top of the list; outfox the consultant in your most constructive way.
You’ll want the references to tell you the usual—what the consultant
achieved within the time agreed. Would they use him or her again? What
kind of hardware, what software, did the consultant recommend? The same
kind for clients with different needs? Be on guard if he seems to have a
one-shoe-fits-all philosophy. Also, ask about the references themselves.
See if they have any connections with the consultant, social or
business.
How many consultants should you try out before signing the contract?
That’s up to your needs and your budget. There’s no law saying you have
to go through all the screening steps here in every case. Why pay $250
to a consultant to audition when that very likely will be the cost of
the whole job (assuming you’re lucky enough to find one willing to take
on a project with such a low budget)?
For all tasks, though, even small ones, you’d do well to bother with at
least one formality—a contract with your micro consultant.
■ ■ ■
A Sample Consultant’s Contract
(Featuring Some Plain English From a
Washington Lawyer)
No, you’re not going to pay a lawyer $50 to draw up a contract for a
consultant doing a $60 modification of WordStar.
But you can help protect yourself with your own version of the sample
contract below. It’s nothing more than a letter in simple English.
William Wewer, however, the Washington lawyer who drafted it, says it
probably would be just as binding legally as a document filled with
“whereases.”
_Dear_ ——:
_This will confirm our agreement that you will perform the following_
[software?] _services_:
[Precisely list the services in numbered paragraphs.]
_You have represented to me that you can complete this project by_
[date]. _You will charge me $—— per hour for your consulting time. Do
not exceed $—— without my written consent._
_You agree that you are performing these services as an independent
consultant and are not my employee._
_If you are willing to work under the terms of this letter agreement,
please sign the enclosed copy and return it by_ [date].
Under your signature, use this language:
_I agree to and accept the terms of this agreement to_ [quick
description of service provided].
———- [consultant’s name], ———- [date of signing]
Remember, this sample is just a starter. See Backup VIII, “Consultant
Contracts: Some Who-How Questions”, for a list of some of the points a
contract might address. One of the more important ones is ownership and
control of software. If you want to own the newly developed programs and
keep them away from your competitors, here’s what Wewer might insert
after the paragraph saying the consultant isn’t your employee:
I am paying you to do this work for me alone and require that you not
retain any copies of it or give any copies to anyone else or tell
anyone else how to recreate what you have done for me. We agree that
the software you create for me will be my trade secret.
“‘Trade secret’ is a key phrase to get in there,” Wewer says. “Then
it’s within common law.”
Again, your informal contract won’t give you iron-clad protection—that
could depend on the mood of a judge—but it’s better than nothing.
“It’s the handshake deals,” Wewer says, “that always fall apart.”
■ ■ ■
“The real problem,” Adam Green says, “is that no one ever has to sign
a contract. People get concerned. They say, ‘Boy, lawyers cost a lot,’
and I know the feeling.” Then Green brings up an exception to that
opinion, lawyers. “I know a lot of consultants who will never work for
lawyers because as far as lawyers are concerned the job is never
complete. They understand what it means to be complete.” Their
contracts reflect this; yours should, too. Have the consultant do the
first draft of the contract, perhaps; but don’t shy away from
extensive changes if need be. “Hell,” tell him, “that’s what your word
processor’s for.” Back out of the deal if he isn’t reasonable now. He
might not be later on.
When hammering out a consulting contract, you should fret over three
variables emphasized by Joe Auer:
1. “How long is it going to take?
2. “How much money does it cost?
3. “What’s the quality of the work?
“If you tie down the money and the quality and not the time,” he
warns, “you give them a license to loaf. If you tie down the quality
and time and not the money, you give them a license to steal. If you
tie down the money and time but not the quality, you give them a
license to cheat.”
Training:
How to Enjoy
the Mahony Advantage
Who-How counts just as much in training your people as in the
selection of consultants:
1. Who’s teaching? Can he or she communicate well with the students, and
how adaptable to computers are the people getting the instruction?
2. What task is being taught? A very teachable one?
3. Why is the material taught? To make your people computer literate in
a broad way? Just to help them do their present jobs better?
4. When do the students learn? On their time or yours? Will you reward
them in any way for their extra effort?
5. Where is the learning happening? Ideally, your students can take the
machines home if they want—one advantage of transportables like the
IBM portable and its work-alikes.
6. How do the students learn? Through instruction manuals, mainly, or
through early experience at the keyboard? Do they suffer through
irrelevant exercises, or do they start right away on assignments
similar to their jobs? In fact, do they start immediately on their
normal work, as some training experts recommend? Do the students work
with teaching disks? And are the disks interactive, as Adam Green, the
training expert, correctly recommends? Do the disks, in other words,
require you to type in a thoughtful response?
“How much?” also figures here. Consider the cost of a good training
program versus your losses from misused or underused people. In the
future you may want an office filled with people conversant with
WordStar or dBASE, but don’t shrug off valued employees who can’t even
play an Atari game. Tutor them if need be. Bend. You needn’t be
sentimental, just practical. Don’t waste the Mahony Advantage, as I’ll
call it; don’t throw away a mixture of background and experience that
silicon won’t ever fully replicate.
Unfortunately, Jim Mahony’s employer didn’t take full advantage of the
Mahony Advantage.
Mahony, a white-haired man with a ruddy face like Tip O’Neill’s, was a
popular local columnist at my old paper, the _Journal_, in Lorain, Ohio.
He barely survived computerization. In fact, he barely survived. He
suffered a heart attack that may or may not have been brought on by the
added stress. His ordeal is a preview of what some companies may expect
as small computers—or terminals like Mahony’s—become requirements
instead of options in many businesses. It is a fitting argument for
tutoring or other adjustments for key employees. Within the newspaper
industry—more computerized than most fields by now—you’ll find few Jim
Mahonys today. But many other businesses are now wasting the Mahony
Advantage.
At the _Journal_, readership surveys showed Mahony’s column was one of
the main draws. He was a native of his steel town, a perfect
counterpoint in a newsroom dominated by young outsiders. He’d worked for
the _Journal_—whether as a newsboy or an editor—since he was ten. The
only break was time off for World War II service. Indisputably, on local
matters, he was a human data bank. “There’s nobody who knows this town
and the people and the relationships, the marriages, like Jim,” said
Bill Scrivo, an ex-managing editor. “You just can’t store this kind of
material. He knew who was a phony and who was likely to mislead you.”
Jim doubled as the news editor (on the _Journal_ the news editor’s job
was more of a copy-desk function than an executive one in the fullest
sense), and over the years he may have saved the _Journal_ thousands of
dollars in lawyer’s bills from the libel suits that never were filed. He
knew, say, that the Phil Smith caught in a gambling raid was not the
prominent black minister with the same name. If nothing else, his vast
knowledge of Lorain, Ohio, and its people made the paper more credible.
And Mahony loved the traditional newsroom as much as he did his city—the
big, black wire-service tickers, the bulky Remingtons and Underwoods.
“A ticker gives a newsroom that certain flavor,” he told me. “You hear a
bell, and that means an important story is about to be released and it
puts you on the alert, makes you news conscious.” And typewriters? “I
figured they were the backbone of newspapering all the way through.”
Mahony obliterated, however, at least two of them. He would strike the
keys so hard that the letters would fly off the arms. Appreciating the
man more than the machines, his colleagues cheerfully wheeled in
replacements.
Dapper Dan, however—Mahony’s name for a young computer expert with some
flashy sports coats and a fondness for jargon—wasn’t so accommodating.
“His word was God’s,” Mahony said, “and he pressured us. He felt that
the pupil should be stepped into a more advanced bracket. And evidently
he misjudged the person who was possibly of an older era and not
familiar with the computer field. He never appeared news interested. It
appeared his whole life was wrapped around computers.”
“The training consisted of sitting down two hours every other day in
this little room,” recalled Dick DiLuciano, the former editor handling
state news, “and then we’d be told that when you hit this button, this
activates this diode or that diode or whatever the term. And finally I
decided they were wasting their time telling what happens when we hit a
button. We didn’t have to know that. All we had to know was what buttons
to hit to get our story into the computer and get it typeset.” Mahony
himself complains that the paper didn’t start him out with real news
stories on the terminal. Instead, he did boring exercises similar to
those in typing manuals. “It was much like a batter in major league
baseball taking batting practice,” he said. “You just stayed there while
they threw curve-balls at you more or less.”
“The only thing Jim really put into the computer on the job itself was
headlines and his column,” DiLuciano said, “but he really was getting
frustrated and distraught. And I bumped into him in the washroom one
day, and he was about to cry. He said, ‘Dick, I know I’m going to lose
my job, because I can’t learn how to work that damn computer.’” He
almost did lose it. Jim was out sick several months, and he had to leave
his news editor’s post. The _Journal_ let him continue the “Mahony’s
Memos” column but assigned him to the “morgue,” the library, to file
away old clips. The library was in a room apart from the city desk. No
longer was Mahony so handy to editors wanting to know, say, if a home on
East Twenty-eighth Street is on the “East Side” of Lorain. (It
isn’t—contrary to what a story said.) Were it not for the mishandling of
Jim Mahony’s training, he might still be vigilantly editing.
What could have been done to keep Jim Mahony there? Jack LaVriha, a
cigar-chomping newspaperman of Mahony’s generation, had an idea. Why
couldn’t the paper have hired a tutor for Mahony—maybe a journalism
graduate familiar with computers who was waiting for a reporter’s job to
open up? The young grad could have entered Mahony’s stories on the
terminal, learning city-room ways while Jim gradually mastered computer
ones. Computers and older people can get along fine. Even without a
tutor LaVriha himself was one of Dapper Dan’s star pupils, and today,
though retired, he still drops by the newsroom to write press releases
for community groups on the computer.
Distilled, here are some lessons from the _Journal_’s experience with
computer training:
1. Even the best-intentioned companies may fail miserably in easing some
employees’ computerization traumas. The paper’s editor at the time was
Irving Leibowitz, a Lou Grant-like figure beloved by many in the
newsroom; I can recall Leibo once jumping up on the copy desk to lead
a “Happy Birthday” tribute to Jim Mahony and barely missing the cake;
that was Leibo. He died in 1979. Were he alive today, however, he
would probably be the first to admit that the paper mishandled Mahony
during the transition. Like many others, Leibo was in awe of Dapper
Dan. And so he’d suspended the skepticism that usually served him well
on the job.
2. The traits which make somebody valuable to his company _may_ be the
very ones complicating his transition to computerization. Jim Mahony
was the folksy, family-oriented man that his column suggested. Mahony
knew steelworkers as well as politicians and businessmen, and to
maintain that network of friends, even in a small town, takes time.
Jim didn’t like working late at the office, boning up on computers; he
would rather be with his family or some of the average people he wrote
about.
3. At the same time you can’t stereotype anyone—by age, folksiness, or
otherwise—as absolutely doomed to fail at the computer keyboard. Just
look at old Jack LaVriha, himself a Lorain native and strong family
man. Jack took well to computerization and would give the editors
cards with numbers on them, saying, for instance, “Call up story
number so-and-so if you want to know about a hot veterans parade
coming up.” Before computerization he’d lobbied for his stories by
shoving them in front of the editors’ faces or leaving notes; the
cards were his new way. Why did Jack succeed where Jim didn’t? Hey, he
thought of computerization, if that’s what it is, I’m going to accept
it. I do whatever stories they give me, so why not this? His being a
reporter, not a desk-bound editor with a strict routine, may have
helped.
4. An important part of training is simple salesmanship—persuading the
worker to adopt the right attitude. Mahony rightly or wrongly felt
bullied. He wanted to be wooed, not pressured.
5. Don’t make computerization seem more threatening than it has to be.
_Journal_ managers bragged how they’d throw the typewriters out of the
newsroom—Mahony’s security blankets. Instead, the paper might have
kept a few there for tasks like note taking. As a matter of fact,
that’s what actually happened. Also, Mahony recalls that the paper
computerized without at first having a printer in the newsroom,
meaning that staffers had to trust everything to the computer memory.
He would have felt more comfortable in the beginning with paper
backups. That’s a close one. Learning the Kaypro, I myself progressed
faster because I couldn’t use my printer at night without disturbing
the neighbors. I, however, was learning voluntarily. Mahony was
forced. Try to computerize with the old system intact in the
beginning—with paper records, in other words. Not only will your
Mahonys feel more comfortable; you’ll be better protected when the
computer glitches up. Sooner or later, they all do.
6. As early as possible start people on real projects. The first day at
the keyboard Jim Mahony might have been writing a column or part of
one. Adam Green, the software training expert, says to start off
teaching your new employees some computer basics. But then they should
buckle down to the practical from day one. Integrate WordStar, for
instance, into your employees’ work. Don’t say, “Okay, now you’re
going to take a class in WordStar.” Instead, have a sales rep use
WordStar to write some letters to customers or encourage an accountant
to start using 1-2-3 as soon as possible on a limited basis. This
isn’t to say that a real project is the only hook you can use. Green
has been quite successful with Adventure-style computer games that
require people to learn to format their disks and other basic micro
skills. It’s a good introduction to micros for the Pac-Man generation.
That might not be right, however, for Mahony-vintage people.
Above all, beware of the babble about “computer literacy” for everyone.
Follow John H. Bennett’s example. With a Harvard Ph.D. in mathematics
and a Phi Beta Kappa key, he’s hardly antilearning. And yet he
skillfully mapped out a micro program for executives who weren’t
interested in all the subtleties of bits and bytes.