Chapter 25: WTM Consulting

The First Contract

July 1985

The lead up to the end of the semester was busy – really busy. Not only did we have to get ready for the contract with Alexa’s company, preparing the ‘Banksia Room’ as our computer staging area, tweaking the training notes from the university to suit the contract, but there were examinations to prepare for – not that I had any, the last two ‘Science and Society’ subjects had their assessments based on the assignments and class work. But I still had to vet the papers, make sure the questions were clear, unambiguous, and we were covering all parts of each syllabus. After she finished her exams, Debra came over for two days, we went through all the training material, dividing the workload between her and myself. I would concentrate on the basics of using personal computers, how to properly handle floppy disks, simple stuff like using the keyboard, how to print things, how to find files on the computer. Debra would concentrate on the applications – Symphony and its spreadsheet and word processing components.

Lisa had prepared the necessary employment documents for Debra; she was given the employee number ‘10’, we were keeping 1, 2 and 3 for myself, Lisa and Michelle respectively. She had also prepared an employment agreement document, the main part of that was agreeing to keep any client information strictly confidential. Most of what she used was pretty much industry standard, she had plenty of contacts through her membership in the Australian Human Resources Institute.

The equipment that we had ordered arrived on the Wednesday; we stacked everything up along one wall of the ‘Banksia Room’, and tested each machine, one by one. Debra had set up a software installation and configuration process; the aim was to make sure that each machine was set up in an identical manner, that way we would avoid any confusion during the training courses. We had a good supply of 5-¼” floppy disks and labels, along with some disk cases, and for each computer we set up duplicates of the MS-DOS and Symphony disks, plus a number of blank, pre-formatted disks.

On the Thursday, we were going to go over some of the lesson plans; I would cover a basic introduction to the personal computer, what the major components were called and how to use them properly, and some general DOS commands, finding files, things like that. Debra would have an introduction to spreadsheets, and how to create a simple invoice using Symphony.

“Will, I don’t really know how to stand in front of a class and teach a lesson; you make it look so easy when you run tutorials or give lectures, I don’t know how I’m going to do this. What’s the secret to being a good lecturer, to running a good class?” she asked. “How did you learn to do it, does the University run classes to new lecturers and tutors, teaching them how to run classes?”

“Hmm, I never had any formal training in how to run classes, how to teach, how to structure my lectures; I got some advice and pointers from some of the other teaching staff, and much of what I do I follow things I saw other lecturers do; or avoid things that I saw some do. The main principle I follow is that I call the ‘eight P’ rule: ‘Prior Preparation Planning and Practice Prevents Piss Poor Performance’.”

“That’s not an official rule, is it?” she asked. “That’s funny!”

“Maybe it’s not official, but it’s pretty right. You need to prepare your lecture before you enter the room, plan out what you are going to say, and practice. I’ve spoken to some people in the military, and when they run training courses, they have a very structured lesson plan and teaching method. They start out by saying exactly what the lesson will cover, and what the people in the class will learn. Then at the end of the lesson, they pretty much repeat that. Now, I don’t do that as formally as the military... ‘In this lesson, we will cover the basics of personal computers. You will learn what the major components of a personal computer are, how to use basic commands to use the computer, and the care and handling of media devices.’

“But notice, I had three parts to what they students would learn; the ‘rule of threes’ is very common. Any more than three things, and most people will have forgotten what the first one was when you are talking about the forth on. If there are only two, they will feel cheated. I know that sounds silly, but think about that with all of the classes you attend, or talks you hear ... most of the good ones follow that rule, and cover three main points or arguments. Now, when I give the basic introductory class, listen to see how I use that formal structure and make it suitable for our audience.

“That’s another key point; know your audience, their motivation for doing the class, and what concerns they might have. At University, it’s pretty easy; everyone in the class, well, almost everyone, is highly motivated to learn, they WANT to be in the class, they want to listen and learn, so they can at least pass the subject. Now, in these classes we will be giving, it’s not that simple. All of the people have been told to attend, they may be worried that this ‘new technology’ will end up replacing them, or if they can’t adapt to it, then they will be fired. There’s going to be a lot of apprehension, and we have to make sure we don’t come over as being arrogant or a know it all.

“A lot of lecturers have the attitude that they are the Oracle, and their role is to toss out snippets of wisdom to those students sitting adoringly at their feet; which is not all that far from how university education is meant to be. I mean, you’ve taken your degree course to learn from the lecturers and professors, our job is to pass our knowledge on to you, those who will follow on after us. But the classes coming up in this job are nothing like that; while we want to make our examples relevant to them, we don’t want to imply that we know all there is to know about accounting, payroll, supply management, and so on.”

“But what about standing up the front, speaking? Don’t you get nervous?”

“Do you know what I’ve been doing out of work time for over ten years?” I replied. “Getting up on a stage in front of hundreds or thousands of people, playing music, singing? That’s probably good preparation for teaching classes. But the way to avoid nerves is to practice; and to know what it is you will be saying. Here’s how I prepare my lecture notes; I don’t have things written out verbatim; just a one page summary of what I will cover; maybe two pages at the most. I write in large, block letters so I can easily see what’s on the page, without having to look down closely. I’ll have little bits highlighted, circled to make sure these are the critical things to cover. But I can quickly glance at the plan, see where I am in the lesson, and know what I have to talk about next. That way, I’m never wondering what I have to say, or worried that I might have missed something important. That’s a good way to make sure that you don’t panic all of a sudden.

“Another thing I do is always have a glass of cold water with me; and every few minutes I will take a little sip. This stops my throat drying out, which is easy to happen when there’s air conditioning or central heat, they often make the room air very dry. But don’t go too far the other way, and drink huge amounts of water, otherwise you’ll find you need frequent trips to the toilet, and that can be distracting if you are in the middle of teaching a class.”

“Oh yes, I can see how that might be a problem!” she said.

“Now, when you are standing up the front talking, your diction is critical. Don’t speak in a boring monotone, like: ‘this lesson will teach you all about personal computers and how to use them in your job,’ you’ll put everyone to sleep in a few minutes.”

I kept my voice flat, just a quiet drone, and the others laughed at me.

“You’re not suggesting she should sing to them, are you?” Merry asked.

“No, not at all. You just modulate your voice in a natural manner, make sure you speak clearly, enunciate each word – we don’t need to sound like Max Walker in the Areoguard ads; ‘javagooweeken?’ There’s a tendency for Australians to speak rapidly, and let their words run together. I don’t think you have that problem Debra, not with your natural Indian accent, but it’s something that I always have to concentrate on.”

“There are so many things to remember! I don’t know how I’ll do it all,” she said.

“We can work on the lesson plan before lunch, and then you can run through it, teaching Michelle, Lisa, Merry, Ange and Tracy this afternoon, as a practice run,” I said. “Now, one more thing – and this isn’t a criticism of how you are dressed today; I know I told you this was an informal practice day, and we would be setting up equipment here. But next week, we need to consider our appearance; we don’t want to look too ‘casual’, that gives the impression that we don’t really think what we are doing is important, neither do we want to dress up too much, that looks a bit intimidating. I will wear pretty much what I have when I am in class; casual slacks, a long sleeved button up shirt, and a sleeveless vest, since it might be cold. That gives me the ability to take the vest off should they have heating in the room.

“For you, I’d suggest a plan brown or grey mid-length skirt, and a simple, plain blouse. Maybe a light jacket or cardigan, just in case it’s cold. You don’t want anything in your appearance to be distracting; you want the class to be concentrating on what you are saying, not your appearance.”

“So no miniskirts or low cut tops?” she said, smiling.

I was pretty sure that Debra wouldn’t wear outfits like that anytime.

“No, let me tell you about one of the ‘Science and Society’ classes Merry and I were in last year. You remember her, Merry, the one with the huge breasts?”

“Yeah, Amy Padgett,” Merry said.

“Well, it wasn’t just that her breasts were very large, but she would wear these tight tops, unbuttoned probably lower than they really should have been, but, the buttons that were done up looked like they were under incredible stress, I don’t know how they didn’t just pop off as she was talking,” I said.

“The thing was,” Merry added, “I’m sure a lot of what she had to say was pretty good, valid, relevant, but we were just concentrating on those buttons, waiting for an explosion of button, fabric and breasts as the thread gave out under the incredible pressure!”

The others were laughing at Merry’s description of the stresses Amy’s blouse was put through, combined with some hand actions of a massive wardrobe malfunction in the middle of class.

“I’m not trying to make some crass, sexist remark,” I said, once the laugher had subsided.

“For a change,” Lisa interjected.

“But all I’m saying, we want the students in the class to have all their attention concentrated on what we are saying, not how we appear.”

“Or if they might get a flash of some naked body parts!” Michelle said. “Debra, look at the way Debbie Rose dresses when she’s taking tutorial classes; I mean, she’s a very attractive woman, and I’m sure lots of the horny young male engineering students would be easily distracted if she didn’t dress down, but, she’s always very conservatively dressed in classes. Nothing like I recall her dressing when she was a student!”

‘That makes sense, I am pretty sure I have some suitable clothes; I don’t dress all that provocatively anyway, our religion and culture teaches us to be modest in all things,” Debra said. “Now I guess I should start work on these lesson plans.”

She seemed to have a good idea of how to take the existing lesson plan, and adapt it to suit the classes that we would be running next week; the example spreadsheet she would using for the first lesson would be a sample invoice. That included the use of formulas to calculate the total price owed, a sales tax calculation, and I felt was a good introduction to the power of a spreadsheet, without being too overwhelming to start with. Plus, it would be dealing with material that all of the attendees should be familiar with. Meanwhile, Lisa and Michelle were working with some of these sample spreadsheets – invoices, orders forms, receipts, payroll time sheets – and adapting them for use in our company.

After lunch, we did a practice run through of the first two training sessions, my ‘Introduction to Personal Computers’ and Debra’s ‘Basic Spreadsheeting’. I thought she did a pretty good job with her first go at running a class, but I decided to let the others comment first. Everyone thought she did a reasonable job; her explanations were clean and concise.

“I liked how by the end of the lesson, I had developed something that seemed practical and useful,” Ange said. “I’ve been on some training courses where I couldn’t see the point in the case studies and examples they used, they seemed to be very contrived, just to prove a point. That one looked very useful, like something that would be used every day.”

“How did I do, Doct ... Will, I mean?” Debra asked.

“I thought it was good; your pacing was about right, your answers to questions were to the point, not rambling,” I said. “I’ll give you one more thing to have to remember, while you are talking, try to look at different members of the class. Don’t keep looking down at your notes, look at several people in the room. That way you can see if anyone is not paying attention, or looks confused. But don’t constantly stare at one person, move your gaze around the room.”

“Okay, there’s just so many things to remember! How do you do it, you see to be a natural at it?”

“I’ve been lecturing and tutoring for quite a few years now, I guess it’s second nature to me; I just don’t have to think about it.”

For the rest of the afternoon we went through more of the lesson plans, until Debra left to go home for the day. Over dinner, we discussed how things went, and the subject of Debra’s performance came up.

“I can see why you chose her for this project, Will,” Merry said. “She was very good, particularly as it was her first time doing that. It’s interesting, a lot of women of her ethnicity and religion are a bit ... submissive is the wrong word ... deferential? But she’s confident, without appearing cocky or conceited, explained things clearly, without making me feel stupid for asking a question. You’ve chosen well, I think.”

“I do too, there were some others that I considered, but they didn’t have the right attitude, not like Debra,” I said.

The next day – Friday – we worked on the lesson plans, Debra had more practice on some of the other classes. After lunch we put the computers for Bitola back in their boxes, and labelled everything so it was ready for me to take them across on Monday morning. I would be meeting Debra at their offices in Marrickville at 8:00 am, I would have Michelle with me, and together we would set up the equipment prior to running the training courses.

We were up early on Saturday morning, after hitching the trailer to my car, it was off to Michelle’s old apartment at Randwick. We had people to help carry furniture – Chris, Garry, Paul, Phil, Bruce, Andrew and myself were ready to lift and carry, while Lisa, Mary Beth, Tracy, Merry and Ange would help pack the last of her things and clean out the apartment.

Michelle had most of her things packed, while us guys carried her furniture down to the trailer – there wasn’t a lot; a small lounge suite, a dining table and some chairs, her bed, dresser and a wardrobe, the girls helped her finish packing her clothes, items from the kitchen and some books. Once we had the trailer loaded, Michelle came across with us to her new apartment; I was able to park my car and the trailer outside the entrance stairs. She showed us through her apartment; it was quite roomy for a two bedroom apartment, she had just had the walls repainted, and new carpet put through it. There were some of the old art deco fixtures in the apartment; but the light fittings had been replaced by some rather unattractive modern styles. She said that when she gets the time and money, she has plans to replace those old light fittings, and also get furniture more in keeping with the architectural style of the apartment.

As apartments went, I thought it was a rather nice apartment; the block had twelve apartments in it; six on the first and second floors, with a communal laundry, garages and storerooms at ground level. The rooms were all a good size; plenty of light entering through the windows, and while the kitchen and bathroom still had many of the original features and fittings, they looked clean and useable. I am sure Michelle would be very happy living there; I felt that was probably the first apartment that I had seen where I felt I would be comfortable if I had to live in it. Not that I would want to live in that apartment with Michelle, but as apartments went, it was the best laid-out one that I had seen; nicer than Georgina’s apartment, even better than Chrissy’s waterfront apartment. I guess I had become accustomed to having the space of living on a large, suburban block of land.

Under Michelle’s direction, we quickly had her possessions carried up the stairs and placed where she wanted them; it was back to Randwick, to see how the cleaning crew were going. Just before lunchtime, we had moved her out of her apartment, and her apartment was completely empty, cleaned and ready for her to hand the keys back to the agent. She followed us back to her new apartment, Merry and Lisa stayed to help her organize things in the new apartment, while the rest of us returned home for our rehearsal session.

Mary Beth mentioned that it was time for us to start thinking about our next album, once again, we want to have it done and dusted, ready for the Christmas period. But with the last one, we cut the timing a bit tight, we want the recording sessions finished by the start of November, to allow time for post-production, so that it will be in the shops before the end of that month.

“What thoughts do you all have?” she asked. “We want to go with a similar them to ‘Old, New, Borrowed, Blues’; that style of music at least. In December and January, we can do a similar low key tour of the state; I think those of us that did the North Coast tour last summer enjoyed it.”

“Do we have any new songs in the pipeline?” I asked.

“George and Harry have a couple they’re working on,” Mary Beth answered. “And apparently Jim Keays and Glenn Wheatley have one or two for us as well. Unless we can think of some covers, we will have to come up with four or five of our own.”

“There’s one that Andrew and I have been working on,” Garry said. “Instrumental only at the moment, but we’ve tentatively called it ‘North Coast Highway’; our last summer trip kinda inspired me.”

“Stewie, Paul and I are working on a few as well,” Phil said. “I think we should be in good shape in a month or two, and we can start seeing how they go playing live.”

“Do we have any live gigs lined up at all?” I asked.

“There’s talk of kicking off the ‘Rocktober’ concerts with a double header at the Hordern Pavilion, us and the Oils,” Mary Beth said. “Apart from that, just the usual mix of Friday and Saturday nights at places like the Antler, Millers Manly Vale, Selinas, things like that. I’ll get the schedule up on the whiteboard today; everyone can make sure they don’t have any conflicts. I guess you’re going to be working over at Alexa’s place during your mid-year break, Will?”

“At least for the coming week, yes, I’ll be over there, making sure everything goes smoothly. Then I’ll have to spend some time talking with her about the integrated accounting system that she wants me to get implemented for her companies. But I won’t be working in the evenings, so I’ll be available for practice sessions. And any gigs we have, I’ll be fine for them.”

“And remember, tonight we’re at Manly Vale; we need to load up by 5:00,” she said. “Will, do you think Lisa will be back from Michelle’s place by then?”

“She was only going to be there a few hours, just to help her put things away,” I said. “She said that she would be back around 4:00, ready for the evening’s gig.

Since it had been almost two months since our last gig, we decided to go through the complete sets for the evening’s gig. It didn’t take long for us to get back into our ‘groove’; and I was looking forward to playing together this evening. Lisa arrived back around 4:00, Michelle was with her, she would be joining us at the gig. We loaded up the trailer, and drove to Manly Vale. Millers wasn’t a bad venue, it certainly didn’t have the intensity of the Antler, but we always pulled a big crowd, lots of enthusiastic, hyped up people. Despite not having played a gig for several weeks, we still had our equipment set up and tested fairly quickly; with Lisa, Chris and Mary Beth at the control desks, they quickly had us through the sound checks. Michelle was able to help with the adjustment of the lights, while Chris was up on the gantry adjusting each fixture, he would get Michelle to bring the level of that light up, so he could check the alignment.

We grabbed a quick meal, then it was time to get on stage. I thought the gig went well, we were a bit rusty, but quickly got into it. By the time we had packed up and got home, I was pretty exhausted. It had been a long, physically tiring day; first moving Michelle’s stuff, then the gig. At least the race on Sunday wouldn’t be too stressful, the Winter Series races were usually pretty short, and ended up with a big barbeque on the rigging deck. Again, we ended up in the middle of the field, these short races with the handicap start really didn’t suit us, we didn’t have enough time to catch up the boats that started the race before us. Not that it really mattered, we just enjoyed being out on the water, and the after race barbeque was fun.

When we got home, we loaded up the back of my car with all of the equipment to take to Bitola on Monday morning; event with the back seat folded down, there wasn’t enough room for everything. I would take five of the computers, printers and software over today; that would be enough to start the training courses; the remainder could be taken over on Tuesday.

I arrived at Bitola’s offices just before 8:00; Debra had just arrived, walking down the street from the railway station.

“This was a very easy commute for me,” she said. “Just a few stops on the train.”

“Where did you catch it from?” I asked.

“Punchbowl; we live only a few minutes’ walk from the station. Normally to get to university I take the train to central, then the bus out along Anzac Parade. This is so much more convenient!”

Alexa sent two of her staff down to help bring the first load of equipment up to the room where we would be running the training course. We unpacked everything, setting it up and testing that it all still worked. Alexa had one of her staff record serial numbers, and she checked each item off on the delivery manifest. The plan this week would be to train the staff at the main office here in Marrickville, and over the next two weeks, we would train the staff from the other companies, and set up computers at their offices.

We were ready to run the first training course just after the morning tea break; as well as Alexa, there were four other staff present. I started the lesson by introducing myself and Debra, outlining what we would be covering over the next few days. It was then into a brief introduction of the personal computer equipment in front of them; how to turn it on, what the various components – system unit, monitor and keyboard – did; and how the system stored information on the floppy disks.

“Imagine it’s like a cross between a LP record and a cassette tape,” I said. “The surface is coated with some magnetic stuff, like on a cassette tape, and when you go to store something on the disk, it magnetises the information, in ones and zeros, on the surface. So, keep it away from any magnets – don’t stick it on the side of your filing cabinet with something like a fridge magnet, it will erase whatever you’ve saved to the disk.

“And that begins me to another point; you may remember being told at Sunday School that ‘Jesus Saves’. Well, you should save, too. Don’t rely on keeping your files on the hard disk of the computer; on a regular basis make copies onto one, or even better, two floppy disks.”

I held up a diskette.

“These aren’t very expensive, maybe a dollar each,” I said. “So get into the habit of at the end of the day, copy your important files to two of them. It might take you a minute or two; but consider how long it would take you to re-enter all of that information, assuming you can do that.”

I then went through the DOS commands to format a disk, copying files from a directory on the C: drive to the newly created floppy, and how to delete files when they are no longer required.

“Something that I always do, right before I press the enter key on a delete command, or anything that could destroy information, is to pause, and look at the command I have entered, and make sure that’s what I really want to do.”

“If you delete something by mistake, is there a way to get it back?” one person asked.

“In reality, no; there are some utility programs that claim they can get back deleted files, but ... Now, imagine the disk is like a HUGE public library, and you want to find a specific book. You have a few choices, you can start searching through the shelves, and eventually you’ll find the book you are looking for. Alternatively, you can go to the card catalogue, and look up the index file for that book, and it will tell you what section, what shelf that book is stored in. So you go there, find your book quickly, and off you go. Now, when you ‘delete’ a file, the actual file contents stay on the disk for some time, until that part of the disk is required for another file. All that happens is the equivalent of the catalogue card is thrown out, so you don’t have an easy way to go directly to the file. There are some utility programs that look through deleted index entries, and find where the file was stored on the disk, and ‘get it back’; assuming that those areas on the disk haven’t been reused. It’s far safer to have a backup copy, and to double check before you delete anything.”

“One other thing, notice this notch on the side of the disk? That means the computer can write on the disk; in the pack of diskettes there’s a little stick-on reflective do-hickey that you can put over the notch to prevent the computer from writing on the diskette. Like the little tabs on the back of a cassette tape. Let’s try that out now, enter the commands to copy a file to the A: drive.”

Everyone was able to copy a file to the diskette.

“Now take the diskette out, and stick the write-protect label over the notch, like this. Now try to copy another file to that diskette.”

I was pleased to see that everyone was able to do that task successfully.

We went through a few more exercises, and I did a quick revision to end the lesson.

“After lunch, you are going to be lucky, I won’t be teaching the next few lessons, but you will have Debra teaching you all about how to use the spreadsheet and word processing software,” I said. “We’ll resume at 1:00; see you then.”

Debra and I followed Alexa to her office; she had ordered in some sandwiches for us, and invited us to sit at the table there.

“I can see now why you are so highly rated as a lecturer, Will,” she said. “I was worried I would get bored or lose focus during that class, but, you made what could have been dry and boring interesting and fun! What’s he like in class, Debra, is he always making jokes like that?”

“I have to be careful what I say,” she said. “Not only is he my boss, but he lectures some of my classes! But he’s the best of the lecturers I’ve had while I’ve been at the University; I don’t think I’ve seen anyone fall asleep in his lectures, not like some of the others!”

After lunch, it was back to the conference room for the first lesson on using spreadsheets; I was pleased to see that Debra had remembered at least one bit of my advice, and had a large glass of water on the desk in front of her. I thought she did a good job with the class; everyone was able to keep up with her example of building an invoice. She fielded the questions pretty well, answering them without making the person asking the question stupid for asking it. I didn’t sit in on the class after the afternoon tea break; instead I talked with Alexa about what she was wanting with an integrated accounting system.

“I guess my first question is just what are you hoping to gain from such a system?” I asked. “I assume that you want each of the constituent companies to be independent entities in any system?”

“The main issue that I have is I don’t have the financial management information that I really need to manage all of the companies. Things like inventory turns, which customers deliver the most profits, what type of jobs are troublesome. Which suppliers can we rely on, do we have sufficient alternate suppliers, what would the impact be of dropping a supplier. I’m sure all of this information is around somewhere, but I can’t get to it when I need it, and without that information available, I’m pretty much running things by the seat of my pants. It’s not that our businesses aren’t profitable; quite the opposite, in fact, we are doing very well. But I don’t have that level of confidence I would like, where I know that I’ve got a good handle on everything.