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.
Bennett is the top data-processing man at United Technologies 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.[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.”