In Chicago: Seminars Everywhere

By RICHARD CONNIFF

Every weekday all over America, on crowded commuter trains and in bumper-to- bumper traffic heading home, middle managers are talking to themselves. They are resolving to build team spirit, to start tickler files, to search for excellence and to drink less coffee.

They are mulling over how to apply the latest managerial techniques to the two clerks in accounts payable who have not spoken to each other since July 1972, when one of them said, "It's the humidity that's killing me," and the other replied, "I hope so."

They are rehearsing in excruciating detail how they will respond the next time the boss ushers them to a low couch and works over their egos like the mad dentist in Little Shop of Horrors.

They are dreaming, these middle managers, about getting away from it all. And short of an actual vacation, a three-day business seminar sounds like just the ticket. It will get them out of the office, and they might even learn something.

One week not long ago, several hundred such beleaguered souls arrived at the American Management Association center near Chicago-O'Hare International Airport. Their companies had put up $800 to $900 a head to enroll them in courses like "Time Management" and "Assertiveness Training for Managers."

Chicago was chockablock with business seminars that week. Next door at the Marriott, muscular types in gold chains and shorts were studying health-club management. Downtown, engineers laid out a grand for four days of "Pneumatic Conveying for Bulk Solids." A company called the 1st Seminar Service lists 100,000 such seminars annually around the country. By its estimate, corporations send 8 million people a year for outside training, and think it is worth paying about $4 billion. The rustling sound of flip charts in action runs like a breeze through the cornfields from coast to coast.

In Room 212 at the A.M.A. center the assertiveness class is already under way. Our first volunteer is Karen, a 29-year-old specialist in inventory control, who is still trembling from a run-in with her boss, C.E. Ogre. In a role-playing session with her classmates, she relives the scene: Ogre looms over Karen's desk, throws down her latest report and thunders that while she may pretend she's turned around the El Paso situation, she is not fooling him. Karen's jaw drops, her head woggles in disbelief, and her voice quavers, "Are you calling me a liar?"

O.K., cut! Let's take it from the top, applying a few principles of ! effective communication. This time Karen looks up at Ogre ("Good eye contact, Karen") and says calmly, "Why don't you sit down so we can discuss some of the problems you have?" Under her breath she adds, "And so you're not standing over my goddam desk."

She waits for Ogre to have his say, and then she starts to pin him to specifics: What would he like her to do to demonstrate that her report is accurate? Karen is by now looking less shaky. But the group takes it twice more from the top to refine her approach. Will the technique work with the real-life Ogre when she gets back to headquarters? "You can phone me to find out," she says, adding, "If I'm not there, you'll know why."

Midmorning break, outside a class on business writing: " and I said, 'Tom, you've got to stop writing your memos like Geraldo Rivera reporting the news, 'cause people are taking it personally.' "

Downstairs, students in a time-management class are discovering how much it costs to take a break. Add up salary, benefits, perks, overhead, support staff and contribution to profits, and a manager's time is worth $1.50 a minute -- much more in some cases. Says Instructor Larry Baker: "I had a sales force that was responsible for millions in sales, and one of them said, 'You mean if I sit and drink a cup of coffee for five minutes, that just cost my company $287?' Well, yeah, it did." Imagine what it costs when some jerk gets you on the phone and spends 45 minutes networking! "You've been taught that it's rude to hang up on someone," Baker advises. "So wait till you're talking, then push the button."

Shoptalk in a class on managerial effectiveness: "I had a lunatic. I mean, he attacked his boss and chased him out of the building with a stool. Our attempt to fire him failed, so I asked him what he wanted, and he said, 'I want everybody to stay away from me. Everyone is impure.' It was The Twilight Zone. So I said, 'How would you like your own office?' "

Imagine dealing with nut cases and having to get your work done too. Suppose your boss has given you 20 people (19, not counting the lunatic), a $750,000 budget and a six-month deadline on a project that will determine whether the company survives.

This is roughly the situation of students in Room 201, who are conjuring up imaginary new projects and then charting all the tasks needed to bring them to market. A manager from Godfather's Pizza is working with a training coordinator from Wisconsin Power & Light to launch nuclear wastes into the sun. Someone else is hoping to market a stringless yo-yo ("potential opportunity: SDI").

A company's survival rides on ideas like this? Actually, the point of the lesson isn't the product but the process of organizing a project into a "network diagram," says Instructor Ted Urban. "I've seen diagrams with 2,000 activities that would fill up that whole wall. People say, 'Oh, my God!' " But the diagram becomes a road map. You can use it to figure out that a two-week delay at Step 16 is going to cost $100,000. The alternative is to wing it, which can get expensive -- especially if you count the $287 coffee breaks.

Midafternoon intermission: A general rush to the pay phones, of which there are 40 in the two-story center. On the line to Kankakee: "It was my understanding that Carol told Joe they mailed it out on Friday. Well, I'm going to call Jim to find out what happened."

Instructors in the seminars tend to mix impressive jargon -- Hersey/ Blanchard situational leadership, Ouchi's Theory Z -- with the homiest of explanations. Introducing the Premack Principle, Larry Baker says, "My mother used to state it functionally: 'Larry, when your room is clean, you may go out to play.' "

Psychometric tests abound. "This is a good little instrument for surfacing data," says an instructor as he hands out a 90-question "preference inventory." In his class on managerial effectiveness, William Zierdt offers individual analysis of the results, adding, "I also read tea leaves, or you can bring your own chicken." Thus a volunteer learns that he's a decision- making rationalist with no emotional content. "Hell, that's success in the business world," says Zierdt.

The idea, he says, is to get people to consider how personalities affect a job. Says the decision-making rationalist: "I've picked up a lot of things on the people side, on the mechanics of manipulating people -- that's not the right word -- motivating people."

Business seminars also offer a chance to kibitz with outsiders. "What's neat," says an Indiana man, "is you're not competing, so you don't mind exchanging ideas. I'm in explosives, and he's making mattresses for hotels. So you don't worry about trade secrets as such."

Heading home, the seminar students look retooled, retuned, relaxed. Their arms enfold three-ring binders full of freshly surfaced data. They are carrying copies of The Pinstripe Gourmet, or Think Smart, Move Fast, or even How to Make It Big as a Consultant. At the airport newsstand a magazine cover line catches the eye: MANAGEMENT SECRETS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT. Now there was a role model for the ages, a boss who could communicate in the "I win, you lose" mode and get away with it. A guy who conquered Iran, no less.

The big question is, How did he ever do it without the help of business seminars?