Corporation. United, a $14 billion conglomerate, produces everything
from helicopters to air conditioners and silicon chips. “We’re a
high-tech company,” Bennett said. “More and more of our products have
microprocessors in them.” Most of the senior executives, however, had
never used a personal computer before Bennett started a training program
for those baffled by tech talk. “It’s not a productivity program,”
Bennett said. “It’s an educational program.” With the $5 million
program’s stress on hands-on experience, however, those goals meshed
nicely.
United homed in on the computer skills that seasoned executives could
use in their jobs and searched hard for the right people to teach them.
“You can get people to teach you to use an automated spreadsheet,”
Bennett said, “and of course there are at least a dozen vendors offering
to teach people to use a word processor, but there is no program that
takes the standard tool kit and offers to at least introduce you to
every tool.” National Training Systems, Inc., however, a California
company, designed the course he wanted. In 1983 and 1984, more than a
thousand United executives were to learn to use the IBM PC and the
Context MBA program. Bennett had settled on the IBM one Christmas
vacation when he himself tested several different brands. It was his own
initiation to personal computing. He surmised that plenty of software
would be coming for the IBM, and in fact Context MBA did appear in time
with tools he wanted for United’s executives; the integrated program
included a spreadsheet, data base, graphics, communications, and simple
word processing.
United held the three-day course in a windowless conference room on the
second floor of the research center in East Hartford, Connecticut, just
across the river from corporate headquarters. Blowups of IBM computer
equipment lined a wall. It was as though United were doing all it could
to engender concentration. If an executive turned to gaze at a
nonexistent window, the sight of the photographs might gently nudge him
back to work. Up front was a projection screen and an easel bearing such
“EXTRA ACTIVITY” suggestions as “EXPERIMENT WITH VARIOUS COMMANDS ON
YOUR SPREADSHEET.” In a photo from United’s public relations office, the
carpeted room looked like a cross between a college classroom and a
ComputerLand store. Executives came from United divisions across the
country. With sixteen IBM computers and matching printers, the training
project couldn’t travel very far.
One of the students was himself a local of sorts, Robert J. Bertini,
Jr., controller of the East Hartford research center. He was an MBA in
his mid-forties, and in some ways he typified many of the executives in
the program. “To a certain extent,” he said of his thoughts before he
took the course, “you’re afraid you’re going to screw up.” He had toyed
with the idea of buying an Apple or Commodore but “didn’t want to sit
there and read a book and hunt and peck at the keyboard.” Still, he was
constructively egotistical: if others could master computers, why not
he? So he signed up. On paper the program was completely voluntary. In
practice, perhaps, what with peer pressure, it was army voluntary. “We
just didn’t feel the management of a high-technology company could be
competitive without knowing what the computer can do for them,” Bennett
had said in announcing the program, and who wants to be known as
noncompetitive? Still, the company was bending over backward to make the
training as palatable as it could. Within minutes of the computer
instructor’s first “Good morning,” Bertini was learning how to load
disks into the little IBM machine and type out the commands of Context
MBA. Mercifully, he wasn’t wrestling with unneeded computerese. “Most
manuals,” Bennett correctly says, “are not written with executives in
mind. Most are written for people who know how to use computers. On page
thirty-something of the manual it eventually gets around to telling
people how to start their computers up.”
Just a week after Bertini finished the course, his own IBM PC arrived at
his office. Man and machine were still new to each other, and
data-processing people were ready to help overcome the normal start-up
glitches, but Bertini faced other problems. Would he have time during
the normal work day to perfect his computer skills? Nearly thirty people
reported to him, and now the machine, too, would be vying for his
attention. He also worried some about his image as he groped around on
the computer. “Hell,” he candidly said, “we all have our degrees of
vanity.”
Once again, however, United had a solution, a routine one in the
training program. It allowed Bertini to take the IBM home. “Let’s face
it,” he said, “the course taught you the basics, how to get on the
machine, how to do some relatively simple, basic things with it. To
learn other stuff that makes it the tool it really is took eighty or
ninety hours or whatever I spent with the thing at home.” Even after
Bertini mastered the IBM, he still used it at home for chores like
checkbook balancing—and for work, too; especially work. “My wife,” he
joked, “decided that the reason this thing was going to be a big
productivity improvement for the corporation was that I’d put in that
extra eight hours at home and give them a sixteen-hour day.” He also
found himself working later some days at the office.
But Bertini emerged a believer in both the training program and the
machine. As chief fiscal officer at the 1,200-employee research center,
he helped preside over much of United’s research and development
budget—then $800 million a year. His life was a series of what ifs. What
about that $4-million mainframe computer; should United buy or lease it?
What about taxes, depreciation, interest rates? What about a number of
what abouts? Traditionally, Bertini had waited around for answers from
his staffers, which could take hours or days; but now he had his own
computer and electronic spreadsheet and could consider more options
faster. The IBM was also handy for confidential tasks like salary
analyses. “As far as merit increases for my people were concerned,” said
Bertini, “I had access to it, and they didn’t. And that’s the way I
wanted it to be.” He also wrote letters and memos on the computer.
“Would you believe, twenty years ago in college I took a typing course?”
he said. When Bertini wrote to Harry Gray—United’s chairman—the center
controller’s secretary redid the letters on a typewriter. But the little
dot-matrix printer worked well for memos zipped out to Bertini’s
staffers. The communications part of Context MBA was also a joy, for
Bertini could send electronic mail and tap United’s mainframe for facts
that previously had been filtered through subordinates. Some staffers
resented his new ability to bypass them. It was a reversal of normal
roles. The boss had a personal computer before they did and was now
better plugged in to United’s information network. “As far as I’m
concerned,” Bertini said, defending his new system, “the boss’s job is
to second-guess you.” But the worried might find some solace: Bertini
was planning to bring in a second IBM for the people below.
Training (Continued):
The Dahlonega Answer
For a bucket of fried chicken, Hugh Hunt, a son of H. L. Hunt, the late
oilman, gave me some lessons on how to run my Kaypro.
An Anderson Jacobson salesman had offered my name to Hunt after he
couldn’t get his Kaypros working quite right with his AJ printers and
the Select word-processing program. I passed on the number of someone
who might actually solve the problem.
Hunt, having tinkered with computers for several years, gave me some
quick tutoring on my Kaypro.
“Well,” I said, “I’m still not really familiar with the basics of CP/M.”
“Come on over,” he told this stranger, who was wise enough to own the
same brands of computer and printer as he did.
“No consultant’s fee?” I joked.
“Bring along some fried chicken,” he said.
Hunt’s home sat on a hill in horse country just outside Washington. He
called it Dahlonega, after a town in the Georgia mountains where he had
once lived and where miners had extracted gold before the Civil War. In
his basement, in plain, fluorescent-lit rooms, were the offices of his
land-development company. Hunt showed me how he had rigged up a roll of
Teletype paper with a clothes hanger so he wouldn’t have to buy a
tractor feed for one of his daisy-wheel printers. A tall, heavy-set man
nearing fifty, he wore casual clothes and looked like old pictures of
his father in middle age. In the beginning, however, I could only guess
who he might be. Even if he had been Hugh Doe, I still would have been
interested in his style of training the people who operated his Apple,
his several Kaypros, and a pair of Osbornes. His techniques were wrong
for many corporate situations. They would have been a disaster for Jim
Mahony, the old newspaperman, who was so heavy-handed that he ruined at
least two typewriters. But they were just right for Hunt and his
people—and perhaps for many other small businessmen who like to be
surrounded by employees comfortable with high tech.
Hunt didn’t give his staffers extra-long, step-by-step guidance.
Instead, he:
1. Hired people who were fast learners at the keyboard.
2. Helped them with some learning aids like color-coded keys showing
kinds of WordStar commands.
3. Motivated them by explaining how their new computer skills would make
them happier—and richer, since he paid them more, once their
productivity increased.
Esther King, his middle-aged office manager, a bright, down-to-earth
high school graduate, actually may have been as responsible for his
training methods as he was. She tried to hire only people who’d benefit
from some quick lessons followed by intensive self-instruction.
“Sometimes I’ll have them sit down at the computer,” she said of her
employment interviews, “and I just turn it on and tell them to type. A
lot of people, they’re afraid they’re going to hurt it. And you’re not
going to hurt it. You can’t hurt it. So you mess up, and you get the
wrong thing, and it says you made a ‘fatal error.’ So you just start
over, and that’s the only way you’re going to learn—is sit down and not
be afraid of it.”
Jeanette Counsellor, at the time an employee of Hunt’s, didn’t just type
on computers. She also knew how to juggle around thousands of dollars on
electronic spreadsheets. And King herself boasted the ability to use
computers to help project building costs, a useful skill since Hunt at
the time was finishing construction of a water-theme park in North
Carolina. What’s more, on the Apple, King helped Hunt do company tax
work.
By telephone—I talked to Hunt and his people several times—I asked
point-blank why he’d been so successful in getting staffers running on
computers.
“I told them,” he said, “how it would be useful for the rest of their
careers to be able to say, ‘I’ve worked with a computer and I’ve word
processed.’” His people didn’t mess with BASIC, just skills directly
useful in their work. “I showed them,” said Hunt, “how computers could
save them a lot of time and trouble in the amount of rewrites I do. I
put it to them as a challenge.”
“I was ready to learn,” said Counsellor, who had taken a data-processing
course at a community college but had never before used a computer. “I
was looking for a job that would train me to do this sort of thing.”
Although your people may need more guidance than Hunt’s staffers in
learning computer skills, you can take heart in the results of a poll
reported in _InfoWorld_. Of 500 personnel managers and over 500 clerical
employees, 87 percent said “on-the-job training to learn new
technologies” is important.
Micros and the Data-Processing
Department
Bertini and the employees in Hunt’s office were lucky—the powers-that-be
were encouraging the introduction and use of micros.
Within American corporations, however, many data-processing departments
have looked askance at small computers.
They’ve seen them as a threat to their power. So American executives
have bought millions of dollars of “typewriters” and “adding machines”
from computer stores, hoping to fool Data Processing (DP) and
bookkeepers. One man lost his job after Data Processing wouldn’t let
executives buy micros and he falsified an expense voucher to smuggle in
an Apple. Dishonest? Yes. But a micro martyr, too.
This atmosphere may be changing, of course. As early as 1983
_Computerworld_ reported that of 220 data-processing managers replying
to a poll, 62 percent said they would encourage the use of personal
computers.
Beware of the De Mille Syndrome, however. It’s the fondness of many
data-processing managers for what one consultant calls a “Cecil B. De
Mille production” with “a cast of thousands, millions of dollars and
years in the making.”[32]
Footnote 32:
_Computerworld_, March 28, 1983.
The poor, ignorant people outside Data Processing, meanwhile, can’t
enjoy all the micros or advice they need. “Last year,” went a plaintive
letter to a computer columnist, “we purchased a microcomputer and
VisiCorp’s VisiCalc software for the company accounting office. The
micro was idle for about six months until someone decided to figure out
how to use it. Since then, half a dozen people in our office and at
least as many in other offices keep the system tied up.” But the firm’s
computer people wouldn’t budget more machines even though the $5,000
micro in the accounting office had “paid for itself many times over.”
The excuse from the computer pooh-bahs was this: several accounting
systems were on the way that would do the job, and why allow micros to
proliferate? “Money,” said the letter to the columnist, “has never been
a question.”[33] Power, apparently, was. In that sense also, many
data-processing biggies are like De Mille.
Footnote 33:
_Computerworld_, March 28, 1983.
“Programmers in general are pretty control oriented, pretty methodical
in nature,” said Adam Green, “and usually the most methodical, the most
control-oriented person becomes the head of DP.”
“If they like you, they’ll help you; if they don’t, they won’t,” said my
friend Michael Canyes, who himself served time in data processing in
government and private industry.
And it isn’t just the De Mille desire for control that has dashed many
an executive’s hopes for an office micro. It’s also their sheer
ignorance at times.
“Some data-processing managers started out ten or fifteen years ago when
the field was growing,” Canyes said, “and stayed with their companies
while more able people moved to others. They just were in the right
revolving door at the right time. Many don’t know enough to get a job
elsewhere. And they don’t understand the capabilities of micros and are
afraid of them.”
At United, Bennett’s executive micro course was geared toward the
nontechnical, and yet he commendably wanted his top data-processing
people included, too.
“Many of them,” he said, “hadn’t touched a computer console or terminal
for ten years and were quite surprised as to what a modern microcomputer
can do.” They didn’t learn faster as a group, in fact, than did the
other United executives. “If they’ve never used a word processor,”
Bennett said, “why would they learn it faster than the guy next door?”
■ ■ ■
‘How
What do you do if you need Data Processing’s favor to buy a micro or
set up an office network of them? Bennett has the good sense not to
“tell somebody how they could do something in a political environment
that I’m not familiar with.” Here, however, is my own reckless
scenario for you. Do not sue if this advice makes you a micro martyr:
1. Before approaching Data Processing, ask who-how questions about the
people there—questions similar to some you’d raise about outside
consultants. Find out who, formally and informally, can help you the
most.
2. Ask your informal Data-Processing contact about possible technical
problems. Tell him what you hope to do. If it won’t fly, how can you
modify it?
3. When you’re ready to deal with the Data-Processing manager, tell
him your exact computer goals. Easier word processing on just one
machine? A micro network tied into the mainframe? Many executives
correctly see big computers as massive repositories for information
to be analyzed on micros.
4. Make it clear you’re aware of your project’s complications.
Anticipate the manager’s own who-how-style questions, especially the
“How” and “How much?” Take on the issues closest to the
Data-Processing manager’s heart. Traditionally, DP seeks to
centralize facts so Sales won’t have one set of numbers and
Administration another set. Does your micro plan tackle that
problem? Also, what about the security issue? How are you going to
safeguard facts stored inside the micros? What about maintenance?
Who’s going to look after the computers—your department or DP? How
about training? Your baby or Data Processing’s? Also, what will you
do for ongoing technical support?
■ ■ ■
Despite some DPers’ _possible_ ignorance of micros, you’ll still come
out ahead with the computer room’s cooperation, especially if you want
your micros talking to the mainframe.
“The situation,” one expert told _Computerworld_ in describing
micro-mainframe hookups, “is like connecting two telephones with a wire
and trying to get a Russian to communicate with an American. The
microcomputer users think they have finished the job, but they haven’t
even begun.”
So if you want your micro to get along with other computers, try to
coexist with the people who might help out.
Well, so much for relations with humans. Now, how do you survive the
computers themselves? How do you choose the best keyboards, screens,
etc., for you to live comfortably with your machine? How can people feel
in charge of their computers—guarding health, comfort, and productivity
against the HAL syndrome?
Backup:
◼ VIII, Consultant Contracts: Some Who-How Questions, page 339.
9 ❑ The Hal Syndrome
Raquel Welch, the movie star who pranced around in a fur bikini in a
caveman epic, reportedly planned to use a $10,000 computer to write a
fitness book. Her ballyhoo in late 1982 stressed that “the mind and body
are connected.” But for _Time_ readers she may not have set the best
example. A color photo showed a tightly gowned Welch lazing on the floor
near the newly famous computer—it lacked a detachable keyboard.
And if you can’t separate your keyboard from the main part of your
machine? That might be bad news for both your mind _and_ body. The best
distance between your eyes and the TV-like screen may clash with the
right separation between your torso and the keyboard. Your posture may
suffer. In fairness to Raquel—who declined an interview on the topic—she
might have felt perfectly comfortable using her computer. Perhaps she
had the proper eye-sight, the perfect body, for it. If she didn’t,
however, Raquel may have subjected herself to the Hal Syndrome—letting
the computer bully her.
Hal, you’ll recall, killed all but one of his human masters. Raquel’s
computer didn’t murder her, but if she indeed toiled hard on it for her
book, it may have done a very nice job of killing her back.
The Hal Syndrome can manifest itself in other ways. Even the wrong
furniture, indeed especially the wrong furniture, can poison relations
between humans and machines.
What’s more, bad =ergonomics=—the jargon for the human-machine
link—actually can make you sick.
Raquel may like her work; but millions of clerical people don’t, and
aches from computers can add to their stress. They can help bring about
heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, perhaps even raise yours by
raising your company’s health-insurance costs over the long run.
And they can lower your profits in other ways.
Working with bad furniture and lighting, computer operators in one study
made more errors and tapped out 25 percent fewer keystrokes than they
did under better conditions. Michael Smith, former chief of the
Motivation and Stress Research Section at the National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), says the NIOSH experiment lasted
a week and was closely controlled. A private ergonomics consultant found
a 10-15 percent difference in a study of good and bad furniture.
Whatever the percentage, however, ergonomics isn’t just a gimmick to
sell new tables and chairs; Smith says it especially can help narrow the
gap between mediocre and prize workers.
Not only does good ergonomics pay for itself in the long run; it may
also improve your labor relations.
It’s a perfect meeting ground for you and your employees. They want good
working conditions. You want good work. And everyone can win; for with
decent ergonomics, you’ll enjoy lower turnover. You may very well lure
good people away from competitors who run electronic sweatshops. Sharp
screens and silky keyboards won’t single-handedly stave off unionization
or endear you to ensconced unions, but they won’t hurt. A smart, secure
executive, in fact, may even turn union complaints to his advantage.
He’ll _listen_. He (or she) won’t spend $20,000 on new computers or
terminals that inflame people’s eyes and tempers.
In short, he’ll learn eleven steps to good ergonomics:
1. =The canary-in-the-mine= theory of labor relations. Ergonomics is
people, too, not just machines, and you’ll read here of better ways to
work with both.
2. =Good job design.=
3. =“Terminal” happiness.= Detachable keyboards are just a start,
whether you’re using a micro or a terminal hooked into a large
computer. Micros normally include keyboards, screens, and other major
parts of terminals. So “terminal” is what I’ll say most often in this
chapter.
4. =The right furniture.=
5. =The proper light=, or as it’s been said, “Let there be less.”
6. =Noise reduction.=
7. =Air conditioning, heating, and ventilation=—basics neglected by a
surprising number of computer users.
8. Honest assurances to your people that you’re exposing them to the
least risk. Not all the extra stress in some computer work comes from
the equipment itself. Some is from _fear_ of the machines.
9. A willingness to consider alternatives to the TV-like CRTs that
computers use to flash out words and numbers. Flat-screen
computers—with thin panels rather than bulky tubes—may eventually be
easier on the eyes.
10. Sensible use of wrinkles like the mouse—the hand-sized gizmo you use
instead of the arrowlike keys to move the cursor on the screen. (See
Backup X, “Of Mice and Men—and Touch Pads, Touch Screens, Etc.” Also
see Backup IX, “Window Shopping.”)
11. A related ingredient, good software—the topic of earlier chapters.
The Canary in the Mine
“How,” I asked a consultant, “do you know if someone is trying to offer
a constructive suggestion about computerization or to get in the way?”
“Consider the source,” he said. “Is it coming from a researcher or a
union?”
To some extent the man was right. Some people, unionized or not, may be
no more than twentieth-century version of the Luddites, the English
workers who, during the 1800s, smashed the mechanical looms that were
taking away their livelihoods. Indeed, Dr. Michael Colligan, a NIOSH
psychologist, says, “Opposition to computers is usually kind of veiled
or disguised under more general complaints about eyestrain, headaches,
and physical discomforts often associated with video display terminals
(VDTs).[34]
“But,” Colligan warns, “if you talk with workers awhile, major concerns
begin to surface.” Legitimate concerns. Whether it’s individual workers
or unions, don’t tune out gripers. Listen to people like Joan.
Footnote 34:
The Colligan quotes are from Joel Makower’s useful book _Office
Hazards: How Your Job Can Make You Sick_, published 1981 by Tilden
Press, Washington, D.C.
Joan started out around 1980 as a model employee in a northeastern
office of a major insurance company, whose officials declined to be
interviewed. “I averaged ten hours a week overtime,” she said, “and I
came in when I had pneumonia and a fever of 102.” In a modest way,
helping to unravel the mysteries of the machines, she aided
computerization. Later, however, in a not-so-modest way, she aided
something else: unionization.