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What could be easier than walking into a meeting and arguing in circles--albeit passionately in circles--about which product to buy? Being prepared and doing research is not a requirement (unfortunately). Simply grab the latest periodicals, skim them on the way to the meeting, and you're better prepared than most. At least in the old days when monks and philosophers argued about how many angels fit on the head of a pin, they had to meditate and come up with some original thoughts to defend their positions.

The buying process doesn't even resemble work. Try organizing a series of meetings on budgets, design reviews or improving quality, and you'll see the same people either run for the hills or nod off in the back of the room. Within the extended decision/consensus/revolution process, there is a longer and more involved process of public and private soul-searching.

The Day I Chose the Mac Inevitably, at some point in your career, you will make a decision that others will question--incessantly. There's a 99.9999 percent chance that the incessantly questioned decision will revolve around a product choice. For me, it was the deci sion to install several thousand Macintoshes. It was an unusual decision for the organization, and the ramifications of that decision have had the chance to fully play themselves out.

More than several years ago, I was involved in a technology evaluation and implementation effort at a large organization. In those days, the effort was centered on mainframe downsizing--moving applications off the mainframe and onto some type of network-connected computers. At that time, the status quo was basically DOS PCs and Novell NetWare file servers. If you were really advanced, there were things called SPARC 1. The press was full of scuttlebutt about IBM Corp.'s OS/2 and how IBM and Microsoft Corp. would take over the computing desktop.

Or, there was App le Computer.

Now, to set the record straight before I start, I wasn't a Macintosh zealot in the late '80s, and I'm not one now. However, we decided the best way to take a leap forward was to present a large number of users across the organization with a radically different and better approach to computing than the mainframe 3270 access they were used to. Our mainframe downsizing would appear in front of the user, not in some slightly smaller box in the glass house.

Not surprisingly, we found that people loved the Macintosh. At least they did once they had access to their 3270 PROFS session (remember, this was a long time ago). We also found, to our surprise, that Macs were very affordable when compared with DOS machines. There was plenty of original, high-quality software and enough development alternatives to have some of those truly productive meetings I mentioned earlier.

But we never really gave people the sense that there was safety in numbers. That feeling of "nobody else uses Macs" was p revalent from day one, and the feeling just would not die. Then Apple's financial woes started to appear as daily reading, and doubt immediately reared its ugly head. Did we do the right thing? I think so.

Back then, the Mac was clearly better than the competition. And we started our effort just as Apple started pricing Macs competitively. The competition caught up in the intervening years, but so what? Our organization benefited immediately and continued to benefit from the decision.