A Byte Of Education

Three years ago, learning to use a microcomputer was about as high a priority for a CEO as learning to type. That has changed. And if education is your goal, there is no lack of opportunity.

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THE STUDENT

Charlie Leighton, the 48-year-old chairman of CML Group Inc., a $120-million specialty marketing company, still does most of his figuring with a pen on yellow legal pads. But about a year ago, the head of the Acton, Mass.-based company whose 11 divisions include Caroll Reed Ski Shops and Sierra Designs, decided it was time to move into the computer age. "If you're going to be in a specialty marketing company, you have to identify with the consumer and how that consumer is changing," he says. And certainly the upscale customers CML courted were becoming more and more familiar with micros.

Leighton himself had begun to encounter computers at every turn. His college-age daughter told him she cut her research time by 80% with her school library's machine. He was impressed by the computer that The Fidelity Group Brokerage Services Inc. in Boston had installed at the airport for quick financial planning. Closer to home, Sears, Roebuck & Co. had tested a shop-by-mail service via home computers, an experiment that could someday have an impact on CML's mail-order business. Besides, all the company's divisions used computers. Leighton was increasingly aware that he should know more than he knew, which was nothing.

"At our age, we are really all computer stupid," Leighton says. "I thought we ought to just play with one and see what they are. So in the spring of 1982, he bought an Apple II and installed it in CML's conference room for anyone who wanted to have a go at it.

Leighton is not fond of reading instructions. "It's boring," he says. "It's much more fun to have someone take you through it. With that goal in mind, Leighton asked a friend, the head of the math department at nearby Concord Academy, whether he would be free to do some tutoring. He wasn't, but he recommended that Leighton hire Morgan Stair, who was a 17-year-old junior and, the friend said, "very bright." He was already teaching some underclassmen in computer subjects at another high school.

Morgan is computer literate with a vengeance. He can program in Basic, Lisp, Pascal, several assembly languages, and Logo. He took his first computer course in the fifth grade, although, he says, he didn't get "really serious until my eighth grade -- ninth grade summer." In addition to teaching the "Computer I" course at the high school, he helped a local company develop a stock options software package. For $10 an hour this whiz kid agreed to stop by CML every couple of days on his way home from school and instruct any of the nine employees at the company headquarters who had a thirst for knowledge.

"Michelle [Waterman, one of CML's secretaries] and I were the first ones," says Leighton. "We wanted to be the guinea pigs."

Leighton instructed Morgan to begin with the rudiments. "I to1d him to pretend I never finished junior high school," he says.

"Charlie was very eager to learn," Morgan recalls. "First I explained to him what the memory was and how the computer worked, then we went on to make sure he could turn it on and use it any time. He didn't want to learn how to write programs, he wanted to learn how to use programs, specifically VisiCalc." After Leighton mastered the fundamentals, Morgan showed him how to use The Source, a data bank owned by Reader's Digest Association Inc.

Leighton was perfectly at ease with his tutor. In fact he found it much less threatening to receive instruction from a younger person than he wouId have from a contemporary. "You don't mind being stupid," he says. "It's hard to be stupid to your peers, psychologically." Morgan's experience with teaching ninth graders was also a plus, since he used the same "what would happen if you did this" style with his CML pupils. "He wasn't intimidated that we were older or had quote, unquote, fancy titles," says Leighton. "He was very patient," adds Waterman.

At the end of two months, Morgan left to take a Harvard summer course -- in computers. By then, though, interested CML employees had a pretty good sense of what the machine could do. Company controller Bill Harris uses the Apple frequently. He received some initial tips on VisiCalc during Morgan's visits, then met with him privately for more advanced lessons. He now uses the software program extensively for budgeting and planning.

For his part, Leighton thinks he will continue to have someone else do the forecasting. "What I might like to do," he says, "is pull up what someone's done and change an assumption. I'd say, 'Okay, the prime rate is not going to be at 15%, it may be 8%,' and see what this does to us overall."

Morgan is not sure that hiring someone like himself is the best way to learn about microcomputers. He recommends taking a machine home for a weekend and playing with it. "You might want to let your kids learn how to use it, then learn from them," he suggests. "You can be taught all sorts of things, but you'll have a much greater understanding if you do it yourself."

But for Leighton, the lessons that he learned with Morgan gave him just what he needed. Computers are no longer as mysterious to him. "It's like learning how to use a slide rule," he says. "At least you know what everybody else is doing. You may not be doing it as fast as they are but you're not intimidated by it." Although Leighton gives the impression of knowing as much about computers as he feels like learning it looks as if he may have caught the bug. This past spring, he and four other CML employees signed up for a five-week course at Concord Academy on the personal computer.

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