REPORT FROM THE ENA CONFERENCE
by Mike Greenly


How all of this has progressed!

Only last April, a few dozen people came together in a Greenwich Village loft to share a hazy but emerging vision: to link diverse people on diverse electronic networks together. Would that be achievable, amidst the hope-clouds?

Well, a half year later, here I am among six times as many people as the original hand-holders who stood in a circle around a geodesic dome. We are row after row after row...in a college auditorium. Folks: this thing is looking more established now.

"Using the Medium" is the theme of our conference, says Lisa Kimball. She says the 150 people gathered today are much more interested in the uses of technology than in the 'techiedom' of hardware and software.

Lisa introduces Peter Vaill, Professor at the Department of Management Science of George Washington University. He is a long time educator and electronic conferencer. Lisa tells us he's the man who introduced her to the medium two years ago.

As a college professor, he seems comfortable bypassing the podium and microphone. He stands simply in front of the head table and he welcomes us to his University. He offers a genial overview of local restaurants and road conditions.

Peter asks how many of us have training in Organizational Development. A half-dozen hands go up.

But, "You are all engaged in organizational development," he tells all the rest of us. "You're already in the social change business."

"We need new ways to foster human communication and collaboration," he says. And computer conferencing is a major "social technology" contributing to that end.

"The least interesting and least complex aspects of it have to do with hardware and software."

We receive now a list of words that had "no meaning in the public consciousness" before 1970. These words illustrate new technologies and problems that we in society are learning to cope with. The words mirror our changing consciousness."

Here are a few of Peter's symbolwords:

Acid Rain
Agent Orange
Atari
Clone
Dungeons & Dragons
Grey Panthers
G-Spot
IRA
Jesse Jackson
MCI
Modem
Palimony
PG-13
Sexual Harassment
Techie
Trekkie
Tylenol
Vasectomy
VCR
Zero-based budgeting
60 Minutes
747

They speak with eloquence of a globe in change.

If you believe the stress management people, he tells us, we are all now *feeling* this change. Right in our stomach linings.

In that context, as we talk to colleagues about the promise of computer conferencing, the reaction could be, "Holy shit! Not another one...not one more reason I'm falling behind in the sands of obsolescence."

The other side of the page he has given us this morning notes seven categories of how people deal with organizational change... "Learnings about Objectives," about Resistance to Change, about the Pace and Rate of Change.

"You may not think you're changing a culture when you introduce computer conferencing, but you are," he tells us. "It will not move as fast as you can initiate it. People can't move that fast. They will absorb it at the rate that they can absorb it."

He begins to discuss "Learnings About Objectives," one of the examples on the list.

"If you plunge into a computer network without being aware of the objectives, of what the whole thing is intended to accomplish...you are producing something that no one will know what to do with."

"I'm not even sure I want the software to be too simple," he says provocatively.

"When you think ahead to the way you want me to use a computer network--my own thinking, my personal energy--you want it to be a part of me, my instrument, that I can pick up and make say my song. Maybe I need to sweat over it a little bit to make it mine. Maybe better than 'user friendly' would be the users being more friendly with each other."

Concerning all of us, he says--we're like MASH. Good people, trying to do good work under very difficult conditions...not knowing at first we've signed up to do quality surgery under conditions of flying bullets.

It's also like "Chinese Baseball," he says [a metaphor first used in a paper on management several years ago]. Whenever the ball is in the air, anyone is allowed to pick up any base and head anywhere with it! The first baseman can pick up the first base and head off to the outfield. You don't know what the rules are because they're always changing. The objectives are unstable.

"'Drill imagination right though necessity,'" he quotes from a poem. If there's anything this medium permits, he says, it's that.

"It's allowed" he says, to the potential imagination drillers in the audience.

[The next speakers are Ahmed Namoury, Vice President, Corporate Technology Office, CitiCorp and Denny Gallagher, Washington- based consultant to Exxon Chemicals Company]

Peter Vaill was right, Ahmed tells us. This medium causes "tremendous social change" in how we do business.

"When Citibank looked at computer conferencing, we had a genuine business need," not just curiosity about the new electronic toy. CitiCorp is a totally decentralized corporation with a variety of independent businesses in a long list of cities and countries...a global financial institution interested in "customer satisfaction" worldwide.

The question: How can we make sure that what one CitiCorp business tells its client (e.g. Exxon) in a country is consistent with what another CitiCorp subsidiary tells that client in other countries? Computer conferencing can help solve the problem.

He agrees with Peter Vaill on not wanting a computer conferencing system be so easy to use that it seems trivial. "Business people need a challenge," he says.

(As he says this, I shudder at the statement, first from Vaill and now Namoury. My own experience as a non-technical corporate executive tells me I had plenty enough challenge from running my day-to-day business. I'd be more likely, I think, to *use* computer conferencing to help with my challenges if it were EASY--and if I were shown that its power isn't trivial.)

(I'll have to remember to ask about this in the Question and Answer system.)

Denny Gallagher is a consultant to Exxon. He has also worked for the Army and U.S.Steel. He skis. He is a marathon runner. He has a beard. And he's one of those Organizational Development (O.D.) people who wears a necktie grudgingly and delights at making bureaucracies more human. Computer conferencing plays right into his hands.

He is not talking, he tells us, about the humongous Exxon that is bigger than most countries. No. Merely Exxon Chemical-- "something they toy with, whether to keep or not" at the parent company. "It's only a $7 billion corporation" employing more than 300,000 people worldwide.

Exxon Chemical began an excellent organizational development program back in the 1950's, he says. But the company's internal O.D. staff members were each on their own, in separate locations.

"They put people in the middle of no place and expect them to communicate and network," he says dryly. They were brought together only twice a year. People began to quit, frustrated with the isolation of their jobs.

Susanna Opper and Bill Paul had a chance discussion in October 1983 saying, "wouldn't it be nice if all these people could talk to each other on a regular basis?" The result was Exnet, established in January, 1984.

Now people working for Exxon in different geographies could start to talk to each other about what they were doing. The system has 230 users, people internal and external to the company. Line management and senior people are now beginning to join in. Conferences are including plant managers and senior vice presidents, and are focusing on topics like how to make the organization a better place to work.

"A lot of professionals are enjoying what they're doing now because they have a forum where they can bounce ideas off each other," Denny says.

One manager, planning a Senior Executive forum, asked for feedback on taking the business leaders to a magic show to encourage a mental "stretch."

"'Wanna lose your job?' he was asked. But he went on to receive a half-dozen other suggestions he hadn't thought of. He ended up using some of them *and* successfully going to the magic show.

"The result of that conference was management asking itself: If we say we want people to take risks, what risks are we taking? Why do we ask for 15 pounds of justification before we ask them to take a risk? There is something wrong with our process and we can improve it.

"The moderator of that seminar was feeling alone and shaky. But every night, he got online and told people what was happening. And every night, he was cheered by "love letters" of support-- from fellow Exxon employees in Australia, Singapore, Washington, Darien, Connecticut.

"'Whatever you're doing, it's okay,' he was told. 'There's no way to backslide because we've already bottomed out.' 'And if you ever need a job, we've got friends!'"

So a pioneering manager, trying to help the organization grow, enjoyed the magic of networking and the emotional support it provided.

"You are not dealing with technology," he sums up. "You are dealing with social change. Exxon's climate is different as a result of computer conferencing."

He mentions other examples of the medium's impact. There was an "unspoken rule," he says, that plant managers were not to speak to each other--not with peers.' But via electronic networking, there is now a Plant Manager's Conference. The medium is subverting previous organizational norms, he says, and that's positive, because some of the norms actually keep plants from operating effectively.

He mentions the death of a valued and respected colleague. At the very moment a memorial service was held in Maine, 80 people around the world celebrated his life and mourned his loss electronically, in a touching and beautiful use of the medium bringing people together.

The original intention of the Exxon system was to get people to talk to each other, he says. But the impact actually goes well beyond that.

"How can we continue to have a class system?" he asks about business that uses the power of the new communications medium to let ideas cross established hierarchical lines.

Progress takes work. He tells us about the simple, one page instructions Susanna provided him, and how important that simplicity has been. He mentions built-in typing programs, privately accessible by senior executives.

Denny mentioned, at the beginning of this talk, that he is sharing information with the approval of Exxon Chemical. I ask him how Exxon's management feels about the positive "subversion" he says computer conferencing is creating.

"I think they're schizophrenic as hell about it," he says. "It's Chinese Baseball and the norms are starting to change. Power positions are starting to change. Lots of interpersonal stuff is happening. It's frightening but it's also exciting."

Bottom line, he says, despite aspects of anxiety, "very few would like to go back." Why? Because ultimately computer conferencing helps people do the job better.

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Author's note: Mike Greenly is a prolific electronic journalist
who publishes his work on PARTI on The Source. His coverage of
ENA's first "Intersystem Symposium" in April, 1985 contributed
significantly to the momentum which resulted in the conference
held in November. This article is composed of excerpts from his
more extensive coverage of the conference, the full text of
which will be included in the Conference Compendium