Does The LEO Objection Handle Still Work Today?
My recent post remembering perhaps the first ever Enterprise computer system brought to mind on ol' example from them too.
Hailing from the once-worthwhile In Business podcasts.
It recalled LEO. Fundamental in the evolution of the business computer
Not from a research lab, nor tech giant, but rather the surprising world of a post-war bakery and café chain.
On the down side, the internal department that came up with the device had a lot to answer for. Yes did they invent the future. But for the remainder of the century they also gave a shockingly erroneous excuse to countless in-house data teams to ludicrously think they were better off ignoring their day job and cut code themselves, rather than let the professionals do it for them(!) As we speak I wince at the vibe-coding being pursued in companies today ...
Still, realising they had something special on their hands, the tea house chain, (I knew them in later life as simply Lyons), embarked on selling it on themselves. I was delighted to hear one of their early ads confront the obvious objection upfront, head on;
Leo is a machine that does routine clerical work more quickly and more accurately than clerks.
The clerks are freed for more rewarding and productive work as the use of Leo expands.
I myself was still using a flavour of this, right upto the Millennium.
Indeed, I remember how HP solution sales trainers lapped up this direction of conversation.
I’m old enough to know what the twin pincers of automated data processing and middle management cull did to mass layers of staff at the collision of first-time computerisation and business process re-engineering.
Omnipresent internet and cloud connectivity brought renewed waves of brutal pruning. Yet these were no longer greeted with the sentiment which held back the early drive. If a task could be mechanised, a human doing it had to go.
So where does that leave Leo’s 1950s objection now?
When I’ve spoken to business chiefs this century about ‘new’ technology adoption, ‘efficiencies’ don’t crop up.
They seem more concerned with factors such as the speed of take-up, problem fix procedures and being fed the tangible returns of supposed instant payback.
There isn’t a sales leader out there unscarred by a reporting system install.
Which brings to mind the biggest of today’s tech headaches.
How do I ensure everyone uses it?
Unlike Leo, you feel for instance that many a sales-system fails completely to free salespeople from routine tasks. Let alone do them at greater speed with higher accuracy.
Yet there might well remain a place for this decades-old, sepia reframe.
Most tech still aims to do what Leo’s creators sought.
Evoking such beginnings could well ease your path to your next fresh installation. Buyers want to know their job is safe, that the thing will actually work, and that someone will fix it when it doesn't. Seventy years on these same anxieties remain, which you are about to soothe, right...?