12 - Espousing the Virtues

Summary

There is only one thing worse than being talked about … and that is not being talked about.

—Oscar Wilde

As the 1980s kicked into gear, the financial mood was upbeat as the economy was slowly turning around, essentially signaling what would come to be known as a decade of greed.

Madonna and something called rap were making waves in the music industry, while music videos were coercing people to “watch” their music as everyone wanted their MTV. And the first generation of personal computers, known simply as PCs, began appearing in residential homes.

In Boston, high technology was being advanced around the clock. But despite the presence of a bona fide revolution in the way workforces were being managed, what wasn't part of the everyday vernacular was the name Kronos.

True, Kronos was reinventing an industry. But the sales hill was a steep climb, not because the company's emerging technology wasn’t a game changer, but rather because the message was not necessarily formulated to engage and enthrall.

Enter yet another all-but-unlikely key Kronite, as employees would come to be called, named Mary Jane Conary.

“Mary Jane really put the company on the map in terms of positioning,” Mark Ain would later divulge. “What she did was define what Kronos could do in corporate terms.”

Kronos didn't necessarily need the brand-name recognition of Sony or the buzz that surrounded MTV's music television. Mark needn't displace Madonna or Mr. T as cultural icons. But the word did need to spread that the new time clock's harnessing of the emerging technology of the day was opening managerial windows into workforce management in a way that the 100-year-old technology that Kronos was both displacing and replacing could not.

Kronos had held its own during the economic slowdown, depending heavily on building an early reputation with a few key retail and hospitality arenas while focusing on gaining traction within a relatively recession-proof industry: nursing homes (because, no matter the financial climate, people still must age!). The nursing home experience had pushed the Kronos engineering team to further improve the product. And with the advent of the PC, it was time to embrace and popularize the concept that what Kronos was doing was about much more than placing a microchip in a time clock.