Machines vs. Teamwork

If you work at a desk, you probably use a computer. If you do, it certainly makes you more productive, right?

Not necessarily.

After hailing technology--especially the ubiquitous desktop computer--as a panacea to make workers more productive and companies more profitable, experts are finding that hardware and software alone will not guarantee that either will happen. But many executives continue to place blind faith in the ability of computers to keep their companies healthy.

“A lot of companies don’t have a clearly defined strategy for how to use computers,” said Richard Long, a professor of industrial relations and organizational behavior at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. “They just feel like they have to buy them because their competitors have them, but they don’t know how to take advantage of them. If you just bring them in and plop them on people’s desks, you don’t get the productivity gain.”

Long studied leading corporations in the United States and Canada last year and found that half the companies in the survey invested in computers without making other changes to take advantage of the new technology. As a result, they saw no increase in productivity and watched their profitability fall an average of 10%.

Meanwhile, in a survey released last month, Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group found that although nearly 70% of Fortune 1,000 executives have recently overhauled their computer systems, 49% wonder whether they are getting their money’s worth.

That’s understandable. After all, it is far easier to buy a computer than to figure out how to use it effectively, especially if that involves rearranging the traditional division of labor.

But people often focus their competitive attention on technology because machines are easier to get a handle on than ambiguous personal qualities such as “teamwork” and “innovation,” according to business author and psychologist Robert Kriegel.

“It’s myopic to think you can get along without technology, but it’s just as myopic to think you don’t need to focus on personal relationships,” Kriegel said.

In their new book “Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers,” Kriegel and co-author David Brandt argue that contrary to enhancing productivity, many new technology tools such as electronic mail and World Wide Web browsers make workers less productive because employees use them as high-tech toys.

Other tools such as cellular phones and portable computers promise to increase efficiency by allowing employees to work any time, anywhere. But they also have the counterproductive effect of isolating employees from one another--eliminating the benefits of teamwork and collective brainstorming. Another danger is that people become more interested in playing with the bells and whistles on their computers than in serving customers, Kriegel said.

All of which brings into clearer focus the danger of investing too much in technology at the expense of investing in people.

“High-tech is vitally important these days,” Kriegel and Brandt write. “But technology alone won’t do the job.”

* Karen Kaplan, a freelance writer who covers technology and careers, can be reached by e-mail at Karen.Kaplan@latimes.com