“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?”
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‘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?