by Michael Finley
Copyright © 1997 by Michael Finley

Much of Brazil is still like that, unautomated. Think how much quicker a Taco Bell here, armed with overhead PCs, would process that order.

People are plentiful in Sao Paulo. Its population, somewhere between 17 and 24 million people, makes New York City look like Saint Paul. So huge, so centralized, so disorganized, and so alone (there are no other major industrial cities in the entire country), the city has been likened to "a mighty locomotive pulling a string of empty cars." People arrive every day by the thousands, without skills, drawn by the promise of jobs.

Office technology exists in Brazil. I saw many ads for computadores, and the seminar we delivered was next to a much larger one explaining the Microsoft Office suite. Home computers are becoming popular with the middle class families filling the high-rise buildings that fill the city skyline.

But computers are absent in many ways. One company we did business with, that employed 150 professional-level people, makes do with a single e-mail address. Price tags are written out by hand. While some goods are displayed, stores like to control the browsing experience, inviting the customer to sit at a desk while the clerk fetches closed cabinets with goods in them. When you make your purchase, the invoice is painstakingly entered by hand, and your credit is checked (by another clerk) through a manual phone call, which may have to be placed several times. A stop you thought would take five minutes can drag out to an hour or longer.

In Sao Paulo, airlines do not open their main counters until two hours before boarding. And then an army of "people processors" form to handle the mob of waiting travelers. The model is clearly military; people are civil but distant. Forget special treatment, like seat reassignment. The customer adapts to the system, not vice versa. You feel more like a refugee than a traveler.

Since people power in Brazil is cheap (40% of the country make less than $120 per month), downsizing hasn't occurred there yet, as it has in Argentina. So organizations remain very hierarchical, with lots of bosses, and lots of levels. Our purpose for being there was to talk about a nonhierarchical approach, the self-directed work teams that have taken over American and Japanese business.

Brazil, like much of the developing world, still has one foot planted firmly in the era of control, of dictators, bosses, and the military model. If you don't commit to the idea of trusting people and to the free flow of information throughout an organization, teams isn't just a wrong idea, it can be catastrophic.

But business people we spoke to were still very interested. Their economy is handicapped by high costs and low productivity, which hamper global competitiveness. Our book, which has done modestly well in America, is a much bigger deal in Brazil. We couldn't step into a newsstand without seeing it displayed. But by the end of our trip, because of the danger teams poses in controlling environments, I was tempted to hide the book behind other titles.

What happens when, using computers to replace people, you downsize a society where a quarter of the people are already living in cardboard shacks on the outskirts of town, along the banks of the city's two lifeless rivers, without running water or electricity?

PCs and networks are terrific for unleashing the expression of the clever few that sit at the controls. But they severely undercut the value of less skilled people. This is a paradox we will all be dealing with in the years to come.

Brazil is a fantastic country whose music, culture and youthful people seem custom-built for joy. But their day has never come. Colombia has better coffee, Indonesia has cheaper rubber, and the many car factories of Sao Paulo, while driving the area's growth, have also shrouded the city in smog.

At times, in heavy traffic, you wonder if you will be able to inhale again. Which is so important. More than teams and PCs, this city needs a sip of pure water, a breath of fresh air, and a moment to pause from its own explosion and decide what it wants to be. x

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