One of my favorite advertising slogans is “Don’t Blame Desinex”. It’s incredibly useful – no matter what problem someone is whining about, from problems with Windows/95 networking to crop failure, I can respond “Don’t Blame Desinex” and be pretty sure the conversation will change direction.

In poring through the awesome array of expenses toted up in the Gartner Group’s Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model I have the same reaction: Don’t Blame Desinex. For that matter, don’t hang these costs on the personal computer, either.

Last week we saw that TCO calculations answer the wrong question, and even the right answer to the wrong question will mislead you. TCO answers the wrong question because it addresses cost instead of value, and because the PC has multiple uses with very different value equations.

That means we should be focusing on the costs … and benefits … of the various ways companies use PCs. We identified three last week: increased personal productivity and effectiveness; improved communication; and streamlined core company processes.

It’s certainly worth knowing the cost of increasing personal productivity and effectiveness, so long as we view our goal as being more effective at achieving even more benefits. It’s just as valid to understand what we’re paying to improve communications, looking for opportunities to keep on improving it while reducing the cost of doing so. As for company core processes – that translates to getting better at developing and deploying new, primarily client/server applications. Always a good idea.

But toting up all these costs into a total cost of ownership? You’ll end up like the sales manager who reduced the cost of travel in his sales force. He succeeded — travel costs dropped 25%. Of course, sales dropped 50% at the same time, but he got his travel costs down.

There is a legitimate issue hiding in all the confusion about TCO, and that’s the Personal Computer Overhead Cost (we’ll call it PCOC). It costs real money to provision a desktop with a personal computer, and you may want to know the amount.

Rather than quibble with the Gartner numbers I’ll use them, inflated as they are. Bottom line: PCOC comes to just over $3,000 per year. That includes all PC and LAN capital and administrative costs, plus the cost of supporting network operating systems.

PCOC excludes all costs that index with benefits, like training and support. It also excludes “end-user operations” which GG defines as “non-job-related PC activities that are necessary due to the presence of PCs.” Why? End-user operations include both costs unique to PCs (time wasted rebooting when the PC freezes up) and costs indexed to benefits – for example the cost of managing files, which is much lower on the PC than in a filing cabinet. The benefits probably outweigh the costs by a large multiple, but let’s be conservative and just net it all to zero.

PCOC also ignores all support and applications costs. The cost of buying, installing and supporting applications should be allocated to personal productivity and effectiveness, improving communication, and streamlining company core processes – not PCOC. More on this subject next week.

Now, lest I seem unbalanced … let me rephrase that: Lest my perspective appears to lack balance … I need to say something nice about the Gartner Group. (I hate this part!)

Once you get past the TCO cost analysis, which has received all of the publicity, the Gartner Group makes some reasonable recommendations on how to reduce costs without affecting benefits. Recommendations like centralizing administration. Using remote-control software to reduce the number of trips to the desktop. Installing automated tools to manage your networks better. Designing more effective training and support programs. And so on.

These are good things to do. End-user support is too often an afterthought in IS, and you probably need to pay more attention to it. Institute a continuous improvement program. Re-think it completely. Especially, make it a career opportunity.

PCOC adds about 5% to employee overhead. While knocking a few points off that number won’t change the world, it will certainly improve both your budget and image.

Quite a few years ago one of the Jims reporting to me created an innovation called the “Daily Musing”. Each musing was a tidbit, milder than but akin to those that grace the top of this column, that appeared on the user’s screen while logging in.

The Daily Musing became quite popular, and employees inundated Jim with submissions. Having your musing appear became something of a status symbol.

One submission (from the Curmudgeon Calendar) read, “Happiness is seeing your Mother-in-law’s picture on a milk carton.” You can see what’s coming. An employee complained, calling it a “clear case of gender-bashing.”

We tried to save the feature, but after reviewing the situation with Human Resources we concluded it was hopeless. We worked through several examples and found that only by extracting every last bit of wit could we make the musings safe for employee consumption. Even making it optional wouldn’t help.

(I happened to walk past the complainer’s cubicle not too long afterward. In the cubicle next to hers I saw a sign that said, “Grow your own dope – plant men.” Too bad about that gender-bashing thing.)

Another example of Human Resources killing a morale booster? No, HR was just the messenger. Our HR folks did their best to help us preserve our “Daily Musings”.

Two recent columns have painted the HR industry in a less than favorable light, and reader response has been awesome in its volume and passion. Only a handful of readers spotted a key point: HR doesn’t become a bureaucracy unless line managers willingly abdicate responsibility. Many look to HR for protection when they make mistakes. Many more give HR the dirty jobs they don’t want — like giving employees bad news.

Yes, all too often, HR departments act in ways that deserve criticism, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise. Please notice that I said, “All too often,” not “Always” or “Usually”. Human Resources, like all internal support organizations, walks the fine line separating administration from bureaucracy (for a wonderful discussion of this subject, get hold of Larry Miller’s Barbarians to Bureaucrats). It also has something less than a free hand. HR helps implement the desired corporate culture — it doesn’t formulate it.

IS managers rarely offer compliments to HR. I think I know the reason: IS walks the same fine line, and comes over to the dark side easily as often. Yes, young Skywalker, when you take off Darth Vader’s helmet you just may find your own face inside.

Take an hour or so to look in the mirror. How long are your lists of “company standards” and “IS policies”. How flexible are you in interpreting them?

How much effort do you expend explaining your standards and policies? Do you explain them only when you issue them or often and in terms that demonstrate their value to the company and end-users?

When you find an end-user has violated one of your policies, do you just enforce the policy or do you take time to explain why it exists and is important? And when you’re done explaining (or better, before you start) do you ask why the employee violated the policy in the first place?

Have you ever said the equivalent of, “We won’t do it for you, we won’t give you the tools to do it yourself, and we won’t let you buy the tools either, because after you build it you may ask us to take over support”?

Did you write the e-mail policy that says the system can only be used for business purposes and that violations will be noted in the employee’s records?

The key questions to answer to find out if you’ve joined the Borg collective: Do a lot of your policies, procedures and standards exist for your own convenience? Borg! Is your first instinct when faced with an issue to draft another one and add it to the book? Borg again! Have you ever reviewed your policies and procedures to figure out which ones you can eliminate? Congratulations! You’re still human.

Human Resources has to deal with executive style, employment law, and union contracts. Accounting has to conform to both Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and the tax code.

What’s your excuse?