How To: Use Technology to Manage People

Randy Fields tells you how to keep in close touch with your employees

If someone comes into my office without their laptop computer," says Randy Fields, "I tell them, 'I don't think I can talk to you now. Get your laptop.' "

Few executives are as committed to technology as Fields, who with his wife, president and chief executive officer Debbi, has built Mrs. Fields Inc. into the world's largest retailer of cookies and specialty bakery products. To Randy, the company's chairman, computers are as vital to operations as the chocolate chips.

They are vital, though, in a surprising way. Computers have become, for him, much more than a tool for typing reports and working spreadsheets. Boring stuff, says Fields; a terrible waste. He has something much bigger in mind. Look at Mrs. Fields's organizational chart -- 20 times wider than it is high. Technology, Fields says, eliminates layers of management and keeps him in much closer touch with employees.

Fields sees the computer as the most powerful tool around for managing people. For keeping the corporate staff lean. For organizing ideas. For enabling employees to communicate directly with the CEO in her Park City, Utah, headquarters. For automating most routine paperwork and decision making. Since technology is capable of doing so much, says Randy, CEOs should "understand it just like they understand operations."

Wise use of technology, he says, is one of the reasons for Mrs. Fields's growth into an international retailer with sales last year of $180 million. In 1990 Fields plans to spin off Fields Software Group Inc., a new enterprise that will develop and sell software systems to retail and service companies.

"I want to transform the workplace, what people do, and how they do it," says Fields, who identified for us the touchstones of a corporate environment in which technology is used to manage people.

How has technology changed Mrs. Fields? Not at all -- which was what Randy wanted from the beginning. It helped that he had two goals when he installed his technology: The processing and even much of the analysis of information should be done by machine. The corporate staff should solve problems, not process information. Branch offices should have electronic-mail systems that enable people to communicate directly to top management. If you have widespread retail operations, like Mrs. Fields, let computers tell the manager how many cookies to bake. Free your people to do what they do best -- run a business.

The Big Payoff One big payoff of using technology is productivity gains. "Technology lets us run the company with a flat organization chart," says Fields, "despite our having grown from $25 million to nearly $200 million. If I'd increased corporate personnel proportionate to retail,I'd have 300 people here, not 115."

MANAGING TECHNOLOGY/MANAGING PEOPLE #1

How to Manage Your Time and Tasks

Gone are the days when Randy Fields and his team jotted down ideas on bits of paper or entered them into date books. Now, all top managers have a laptop computer that runs a program to help them manage their time and tasks. Everyone uses Agenda, a Lotus Development Corp. program that lists for around $395 (see Executive Software: "Someday I'll Get Organized," December 1988, [Article link]). A user types ideas into the program, which automatically files them under such categories as a project name or a follow-up date. Later, the user can cross-index various other data he or she has entered.

Fields also recommends another Lotus program, Metro, which provides functions such as a text editor, a calculator, and a phone book. Price: about $85.

MANAGING TECHNOLOGY/MANAGING PEOPLE #2

How to Manage People in Remote Locations

Any company with offices or stores scattered in far-flung locations has critical problems to deal with: how do you foster communication with the home office? And how do you assure the highest standards of performance when top management isn't there to supervise?

Randy Fields believes that technology provides many of the answers. He uses software that the company itself developed to help him manage his stores (see "Mrs. Fields' Secret Ingredient," October 1987). Here's how he does it:

Goal: Free up store managers from the routine process work so they can get out of the back room and do what's most important: meet customers face-to-face.

Here's how: A computer in each cookie store tells the manager how much business is expected that day, based on historical data. It instructs the manager in, for example, the amount of batter to mix and at what time. Later, the computer updates the projections based on that day's experience.

Goal: Identify operating problems quickly and provide help to store managers immediately.

Here's how: At the end of each day, sales data from each Mrs. Fields store streams into Park City headquarters. The following day, managers can quickly get on top of problems.

Goal: Flatten the organizational chart by enabling employees in the stores to communicate directly with chief executive Debbi Fields.

Here's how: Employees send ideas to Debbi via electronic mail; they receive a reply within 48 hours.

The Right System How do you choose the right system? Every company's technology needs are different, says Fields. Call in a consultant -- the largest accounting firms, he says, are generally quite skilled at helping small companies choose a computer system to meet their needs.

SET THE EXAMPLE

Learn to Use Computers Yourself

The person at the top has no choice. "You must be a computer user," says Fields. "The example must come from the CEO."

When he introduced Agenda, the new management software, to the company, Randy recalls that Debbi didn't want to use it. "She resisted it for a long time," he says. "I used to bring my laptop to the dinner table. Debbi finally said, 'If I'm going to avoid being a computer widow, I'd better find out how to use it.' So after dinner we fired it up. I spent 15 minutes instructing her, and she sat up until 3:00 in the morning and entered her entire day planner into it."

INFORMATION EXCHANGE

Get Exactly the Data You Need

Randy Fields recommends keeping two things in mind when buying or developing new software:

* Remember who's boss. "What most CEOs are getting now is information that the MIS [management information systems] department is telling them they can have," says Fields. "You've got to turn around and say, 'This is what I want.' If the MIS director says he can't get that to you or it can't be done, get rid of him."

* Get the right data at the right time. "If you have a business like retailing," says Fields, "the change is daily, and information has to be managed daily. What you want is information that's appropriate to the kinds of decisions you make."