Bluff won’t hide all high-tech phobias

Press, 12 November 1985, Page 29

Bluff won’t hide all high-tech phobias

Many senior management people are afflicted by computer illiteracy. GARETH POWELL reports on this new disease.

There is a new problem associated with computers which is so new and so illdefined it does not yet have a name. No doubt it soon will. The best way it can be described so far is as an inordinate fear of computers added to a continuing need to disguise that fear. It is created by ignorance on the part of senior executives and intentional persiflage On the part of computer professionals. It is a situation which is causing some concern. Senior executives are rapidly discovering junior staff understand the complexities of computers and modern technology far better than they do. As a result, senior management finds itself in some areas feeling inadequate, even beleaguered. True, these feelings of inadequacy are often cleverly hidden by bluff. “I leave that sort of thing up to the bean counters.” “Why should I learn to type when I have a secretary?” “Computers' prevent you from seeing the big picture.” In reports by and to management, it is put rather more formally. “Much of the work of computers is associated with accountancy and is the proper province of the accounts department.” “Senior executives can almost certainly find better things to do with their time than typing letters. And an overobsession with the minutiae of computer printouts can prevent creative thinking about the challenges and problems that face a company.” All of these statements are, in a limited sense, true. Many of these statements hide an increasingly desperate sense of inadequacy. They do not help alleviate the feeling of sheer helplessness which overcomes a junior handling with complete confidence a sophisticated electronic machine when the executive does not even know how to switch it on. There would appear to be no accurate studies available in Australia on redun-

dancy caused by the computer ignorance. It may be the problem is in its infancy, although a warning note was. sounded by Mr Robert White, the managing director of Westpac, when he said, a year ago, that there was not much future for a bank manager who could not use a computer and spreadsheet to work out a client’s cashflow position. In Japan, of all places, the problem is well known and acutely observed.

Office automation in Australia, although it is still in its infancy compared with the United States, is having a particularly marked effect upon the normal management style of the Japanese.

This is because the Japanese method of working has gone from handwritten calligraphic text to computers and facsimile transmission — all the modern gee whizzery — almost overnight. There has effectively been no transition period with typewriters — electric or steam — and photocopiers. The result is that at the higher levels of management there is an awful sea of computer illiteracy. This is even apparent in the major Japanese computing companies. Many senior businessmen are realising a yawning gap exists between them and junior members of staff. The fact senior executives go to great lengths to conceal their ignorance does nothing to help improve their efficiency. This electronic ignorance is resulting in executives being replaced by those who do know what is going on in the world of computers’ — even if it is only through a glass darkly. According to the Wako Economic Research Institute, a record-breaking 172 companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange changed their president in the first five months of this year. And the reason most often given was the inability of the older executives to keep abreast of modern technology. The problem is not restricted to an understanding of, say, data processing, but

to a clear comprehension of the possibilities and opportunities presented by office automation and computerisation in all its aspects. A study carried out by the Japanese Economic Planning Agency concluded that employees in their fifties were becoming increasingly hard to employ in an automated office and, as a result, the highest numbers of redundancies were in this age group. In any other country this would be unremarkable. In Japan, with its long tradition of total security of employment, it is astounding. This ignorance and this inability to adapt, stem, in part, from the totally spurious curtain of jargon and pseudo-expertise which has been erected by computer professionals in jealous defence of their own satrapies. In a recent issue of “The Catalyst,” the official journal of the Australian Institute of Systems Analysts, Mr Paul Clune, the finance director of Essex Laboratories, wrote: . “All that creative skill and inability used to develop computer systems and programs is not reflected in the motivation to inform the lay user about how and where the ever-improving hardware and software facilities can assist the user.” In the same issue Mr Bill Brunsdon, who runs a management services company, listed some areas in which communication between management and computer personnel could be improved, and in doing so he provided some telling home truths. He concluded his article by saying: “As the information revolution progresses, great advantage will accrue to those who can work in both management and computing and can speak the language and understand the culture of both groups.” It is possible to put it more strongly than that. Anyone who is unable to understand the language of both computers and management can expect, at best, slow advancement. At worst, early retirement.