If the actor Stephen Fry's blog isn't on your reading list, I highly advise it. It's smart, funny and quite insightful. He's a tech geek like yours truly and I find his observations a breath of fresh air.
Below he compares the executive today vs. yesteryear, the main difference being staff. Any executive worth their salt had a secretary who managed all of the crap that we have to manage ourselves. There's much about the past I don't want to repeat but there are days when I wish I had a good right arm as support.
"When I watch an old TV sketch or drama set in an office it takes some time to spot What’s Wrong With This Picture. Most business people didn’t have computers on their desks until the mid-eighties. Desks had intercoms, pads of paper, an electronic calculator and executive toys like the Newton’s Cradle and the 8-Ball Decision maker. You look at a busy police incident room, a buzzing news room or any kind of office from the pre-digital age and you realise that there are no computers and you try and remember how work got done back then.
Well, there were people called secretaries. They would file documents, pay and send out invoices and arrange meetings and run diaries. They would type up and send letters that were dictated, sometimes personally, often into recording machines.
“Can I use your dictaphone?” “No, use your finger like everyone else”
The computer revolution that has set us all free has actually come close to enslaving us. Executives who once relied on secretaries to do their typing and their admin now have to do it all themselves. They even have to get their own coffee and pinch their own bottoms.
I suppose it’s good for the soul, but it doesn’t half give one pause."
Hat tip [Stephen Fry]
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