My boss is suffering (and making us suffer to) from his lack of computer understanding.
He is 49, he came to computers during his career rather than at college/school, so didn’t grow up with them like many of us do now.
I know he is capable of learning because in past jobs he has been a “super user” (like admin but not quite that high) on quite sophisticated and complicated newsroom software.
The thing is, those computers were basically terminals, it was in the days before email, and since then he is struggling. He doesn’t understand the concept of an OS vs an application/program. He doesn’t get the difference between webmail, Hotmail, and an email program like Outlook Express. The IT guy at work is desperately trying to wean him off Hotmail because the inbox is so small messages keep bouncing, but he just won’t budge.
When ever I broach the subject of maybe taking lessons, getting help, whatever, he gets hugely irritated, angry, defensive (I’ve tried every approach). He refuses to admit he has a problem, even though it is clearly affecting his productivity and mine. Getting up from my desk every five minutes to help him open an attachment isn’t fun.
I know that illiterate people (in terms of reading and writing) are very defensive and often secretive about their knowledge gap. I think he is suffering from the same shame and self-denial. It’s a vicious circle also of always being too busy to address the problem, because his lack of skill is making him take ten times as long over things, miss important emails from clients, fail to open attachments, etc etc.
We are a very small company and don’t have secretaries or secretarial support, people do their own correspondence.
Anyone have any advice or help for what I can do for him?