Change

When you think of a piece of “computer paper,” what do you envision?

Do you think of a white “letter-sized” piece of paper sans perforations? Or do you think of an 11”x14 7/8” (or 8.5”x11 7/8”) “greenbar” paper, with sprocket perforations on either side of the paper? If you remember greenbar, you must be over 40!

Greenbar, paper with wide green (or blue) “bars”.

The bars helped the reader to follow the lines of text on wide printouts and reports. The bars were 1/2 inch wide which is 3 lines at 6 lines per inch or 4 lines at 8 lines per inch. Normally 132 characters would be printed across the width of the page at 10 characters per inch.

There was a whole industry around computer printouts. There were fiberboard covers, with neat nylon posts to hold the paper. These covers would then “hang” in special computer filing cabinets.

In the mid 80s, the shift to the current “standard” began. I was working for an office products company, and while we were predicting the paperless society, the company invented ion deposition printed to compete with laser or ink jet printing.

We were very excited when we began the shift from the old style printouts to the new. The first day, we were handing printouts to our users fully prepared for accolades. While most embraced the change, there was an accounting supervisor who quickly threw water on our enthusiasm. “I have no place to store these printouts.” Working for an office products company making 3 hole binders, I was rather taken aback by the comment. But, but, but…..

Over time, we overcame the objection, although we did for a long time print “greybars” on the paper.

We made many mistakes in our rush to be good corporate citizens all coming down to good change process.

We should have:

• “tested” the format change more.
  
  
  
  • - At first, we offered “3 hole punched” paper, and “plain.” We eventually switched to just 3 hole punched.
  
  
  • Greenbar was also a continuous sheet, where the new format is loose sheets. This required us to come up with a “packaging” solution.
  
  
  
  
• Communicated to our users more. Yes, we let them know it was coming. In hindsight, we could have done more…such as sending out sample reports, letting them have time to buy some 3 hole binders


• Switched formats at year end, or at least end of quarter. While minor, it would have eased some of the storage issues.

Where else are we having changes in the industry?

When greenbar was popular:

• There was no PC.


• Cell phones were the size of briefcases.


• “Dial up” was over an “acoustic coupler.” (In hindsight, it’s amazing an acoustic coupler ever worked.)


• Faxes were all printed on thermal paper. Leave the thermal paper by a window, and the fax went away!


• Flat panel displays have largely replaced the “tubes” even though “tubes” are less costly to acquire


• Many companies had one scanner, in an engineering or graphics area. Now, scanners are in many desktop printers and all fax machines (fax scanner may not have color – yet)

So what are the new technology innovations we still need to communicate and prepare our users to learn and embrace? Let me know.

By the way, we’re still going to be paperless. Someday.