A long time ago, in an office far, far, away…

Sometimes, old tales can carry more than a lot of blaster explosions and driods, in this case, I’m hoping you find a useful story about effecting change by addressing various levels of basic human needs. This one takes place at the dawn of the “Office” computing age, around 1984. This was the year of the Mac, the year of Big Brother (not the TV show), when the UK agreed to sign over Hong Kong, and the Dow Jones broke 1200. Manufacturing enterprises had large teams of design engineers and scientists. Most were very “old school” organizations. That workforce, at that time, saw “typing” as a clerical skill, not worthy of their perceived high-value brains. Few saw computing as anything other than direct analytical support for their design and analysis processes. Ok, they did see the bean-counters using them. Hey, that’s what we called them back then! Now, of course, they’re in charge of IT in many organizations. Anyway, what they did all understand was that the documentation process that supported their design and manufacturing mission was a necessary, albeit tedious, time-consuming, and ancillary process. This process, I might note, was not considered worthy of significant improvement efforts. What they didn’t know was that it was consuming more than 30%, and for some jobs, as much as 60% of their “engineering” work hours. Actually, technical documentation still accounts for excessively large blocks of engineering time in many organizations, but that’s another story.

I’ll save the details of how we greatly reduced the time that our engineers spent doing design documentation for another case study. This study will focus on one element, necessary to the future success of those content automation processes, specifically, how do you get a bunch of old engineers who never touched a keyboard in their life, to learn how to type.

Seriously. We laugh at such a problem today, but this is about change, not keyboard skills. Follow me on this. We knew that we would need a “network” over which documents could be shared and moved around for digital editing. LANs were non-existent outside of speciality work-groups. Less than a few percent of the Engineering department, our target audience numbering around 5000, had any kind of terminal. Those who had them were using VAX or CDC terminals and computers for analytics. We had a few PCs in, only because someone had a little extra budget and thought they were cool.

We had to figure out how to get terminals (or PCs) on the desks, get people communicating with them, and yes, that meant we had to figure out how to get these old engineers and scientists to use a keyboard.

So, we had our work cut out for us.

We had already located a viable “office automation” suite that would enable general email level collaboration on documents in a consistent format. Since it was VAX/VMS based, we had computers available, and some expertise in house to manage it. And, some terminals available already. That was not the task at hand.

Our self-assigned task was to get 5000+ casual contributor document creators to actually give up their reliance on typing pools and administrative assistants, and start writing and collaborating on content… themselves. We figured this to be a three to five year venture. We had to provide some incentive to get them to accept a terminal or PC on their desk, and to learn to type well enough to use it. And, since these knowledge workers were regarded as minor demigods in this industry, they had to WANT to do it.

Now, we knew that an engineer “could” learn to type. The engineers doing analytics proved that. A genetic disorder preventing keyboard contact, as some of them tried to convince us, did not exist. So, how do you get old dogs to learn new tricks when those old dogs averaged about 50, and grew up with slide rules (one of those old dogs told me a story about working at the Lockheed Skunk Works in the 50s-60s on the SR-71, the fastest air-breathing aircraft ever built — still to this day — and how it was designed using those slipstick, bamboo calculators). How do you get these old dogs to learn new tricks when those old dogs’ bosses were no more interested than they were to change anything? How do you get old dogs and their bosses to change, when they have those perfectly good Administrative Assistants and “typing pools,” ready to translate their sloppy handwriting and non-repro-blue pencil markups (look it up, really) into crisp, clean, typed double-spaced technical specifications. And finally, how do you get these old dogs to change how they perform 30 to 60 percent of their on-the-clock-time, when they don’t even know that there’s a problem. By the way, when we confronted management with the “real” problem as partially described here, a few understood instantly, but many continued to deny the problem existed. The general perspective was that the admin assistants would always be able to type faster than the engineers, and they got paid a lot less. They honestly believed that engineers’ presence on a keyboard would be a waste of their time, especially since they wrote so very quickly with their Scripto mechanical pencils on their green graph paper. Their Administrative Assistants were, in their opinion, necessary to the process of writing anything that had to be legible.

That’s when it hit us, Administrative Assistants! Administrative Assistants served the basic needs of their managers. For busy leaders, Administrative Assistants ensured survival. The best of them catered to the higher needs, by providing competitive advantage over their peers through the administration of a well-oiled department. If you looked high enough in those old hierarchical organizations, you found the Big Boss and his staff. At this company, that was the VP of Engineering and his Chiefs. Just below them in hierarchy, and above them in actual control of the organization, were their Administration Assistants. Even back then, they were Administrative Assistants, at least, until you got below the Chief level. Below the Chief level, they were called “Secretaries.” Back then, they were almost always female, and as today in the general workplace, always a bit smarter than those males for whom they worked.

I introduced myself to Maureen. Maureen was the Administrative Assistant (Admin) for J-P. J-P. was the V.P. of Engineering. This made Maureen the highest authority in the 5000+ person department (well, it seemed that way). Now, J-P. had 10 Chiefs, and they each had an Admin reporting to Maureen, creating an Admin hierarchy that matched that of the Senior managers.

Maureen was a very intelligent and forward thinking person. Although she was equipped with a reliable and capable IBM Selectric typewriter, she was open to try new things.

We set up a little demo for her and her 10 Admins. The VAX/VMS Office Automation solution we had installed on the engineering VAX was on demo on loan from DEC (look that one up).

We described the idea of email, we demonstrated it, we showed them how nicely the word processor let them type memos, and emails! How easily they could change the stored memos and documents. And they could save or print the memos, or just send them attached to an e-mail. We showed them how they could schedule meetings, for themselves, and their Chiefs/VP. We promised them that we would set up rooms to schedule, just like people.

Maureen had J-P. sign a purchase order for eleven VT220 terminals within hours of leaving the meeting. Never before had I seen a P.O. be processed as quickly by that organization. Of course, we still had to buy the software, but we figured once they start using it, that little $50K expense wouldn’t be a big issue… and we did tell them it was just on demo, honest.

Well, these skilled and capable Admins were important, remember, they were all already world class “typists.” Fortunately, as part of the deal to get them up and running quickly, and because she saw immense value in doing so, Maureen agreed to try to persuade J-P. to try it. She showed him all the things she was doing. She demonstrated how, if J-P. needed all the Chiefs in his conference room, she could send one email to her team, and they’d be tracked down and in the room in minutes. This saved many minutes in phone calls. She demonstrated how she could write Memos and have him review them on a terminal (if he had one). He really liked the calendar function, as long as Maureen managed it.

But alas, two, then three weeks passed — nothing from J-P. But, Maureen said that he was looking over her shoulder a little more each day.

Then it happened… I got a call from Maureen. J-P. wanted a terminal. We managed to intercept a nice VT320 (color) terminal. I remember as yesterday, it was set up on his office credenza, behind his desk, and connected for the first time.

I said, “Ok, J-P., type ‘c vaxb’” our connect string.

Like a speed reader on “War and Peace,” his finger moved over the keyboard… he whispered, “c” and his finger punched down and then continued onward… then again starting from the top.

After passing along all the rows to the bottom, he said, “Where is the space key?”

Well, we got him connected, and logged in. For a week he struggled through. I have the utmost respect for that gentleman’s vision and determination.

That week, he ordered up a big old Compaq suitcase computer, and…

“Typing Tutor”

He took that suitcase computer to his mountain cabin for a weekend, and came back with a passion.

Within another week, he signed off on a P.O. for terminals for his Chiefs. Boy, were they surprised when we came around to install the network drops.

Most of the Chiefs saw this as innovation, and something new to try. Others, as an inconvenience and something to ignore.

But I remember clearly when one of the more reluctant called in a panic. When we first put together our priority list, he so despised the idea of using a keyboard that he said, “put me last, never if possible.” His reluctance would be short lived.

He called me directly, “Help! I just missed a big meeting with J-P. He emailed everyone, wanted us in his office ten minutes ago, I missed it!”

Trying to console him, I said, “Wow, we told him that people might not be at their terminal, so he should not always expect an instant response! I’ll talk with him.” Whereby he said, “That’s not the problem!”

“Is your system down? We’ll get someone up there ASAP!”

“No!” He replied, “I just don’t have my terminal yet! It’s not scheduled to go in until next week, you have to get it installed NOW!”

In that moment, I knew we would be successful. We knew that the basic human needs of survival, and then belonging, and eventually, self-esteem, would rally the Chiefs to the cause. And it did.

We got the Chiefs online. We got them a VAX typing tutor program. A few put in P.O.s for their staffs terminals. We helped a couple order and set up PCs with terminal emulators. Then, the rest got on board. As each reluctant manager saw their peers join this top-down clique, they quickly demanded entry. And because the value realized was as visible with subordinates as superiors, the technology kept rolling down hill. With each level of the work hierarchy transcended, another battle for survival and belonging began. The pressure from the top was one thing, no one “ordered” each successive level of management to get online, they were just required to get their admins/secretaries online. But pressure, mostly due to visible results of their peers, made getting “online” something akin to fire and the wheel — had to have it to survive.

5000+ employees of that Engineering department went from non-repro blue pencils to email and electronically produced documents in about 1.5 years. This may seem like a long time in today’s rapidly changing office, but this case was, as one of the Chiefs once said to me a couple of years later, a revolutionary shift in the office paradigm, virtually over night.

And I got what I needed — a network of engineers collaborating on technical documents, without them even knowing my secret mission to get them there.

Oh, since every engineer in that department had to assign their time to project charge numbers, we could track a lot of their activities. Next time, we’ll tell the story about how, expanding our network to include PCs, Macs, and some cool pre-XML technologies, we reduced the measurable cost per page for creating proposals for government RFPs from $280 per page down to… well, suffice it to say, we paid for a quarter-million-dollar software package, consulting, support, training, and operating costs with one 45 day writing/documentation project. And it was a tangible, real dollar savings.

The moral of the story… nearly every knowledge worker of that era saw their connection to their managers and peers as satisfying a basic need. For some, it was survival. For others, the need for belonging or enhanced self-esteem. By Improving that connection for some, we created a competition of needs for all the rest. We created a vacuum that had to be filled.

So, it normally takes a lot of small battles to win the war against the empire of the paradigm. But if you happen to see the Death Star, take a shot at it. Frankly, you don’t get too many chances to blow up the Death Star, but if you recognize the opportunity to do so, change can happen like a reactor chain-reaction.