Just Because it’s Not Broken Doesn’t Mean it Can’t be ‘Fixed’
I love it when a client uses the old adage ‘it’s not broken …” to which I finish the sentence with “which doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed”. That always seems to raise an eyebrow or two because they expect you to answer as any other vendor or partner might. Well I was reminded recently that even in the simplest of environments just because it’s working fine does not mean it can’t be improved. I’ll be using an analogy here but it should be a simple one. Here’s my story; I’ve lived in my home for over 4 years now and I’ve been using the same shower every day. I’ve had the great fortune of being a ‘solo’ owner with my husband using our second bath room as his man cave. Inside my shower is a ‘caddy’ or tower for which to put all of my accoutrement (soap, shampoo, etc). I placed this tower inside the stall shower and never thought twice about its location or functionality because it “works”. After 3+ years of living in the house we introduced a new variable (enter infant daughter) that quickly took over the 2nd bathroom and forced a consolidate of my husband and I into the same bathroom and subsequently same shower. Of course he brought along his accoutrement and quickly changed the dynamics inside the tower caddy.
For months every time I got into or moved around the shower I found myself knocking over a bottle or razor and picking up that item returning it to the caddy only to knock it over another time. Again, the caddy was working fine I just wasn’t paying attention to the fact a quick ‘assessment’ of the situation and slight adjustment could make all the difference with my experience. After several weeks and an escalation to inappropriate vocabulary I stepped back from the environment and asked my husband to come ‘assess’ with me what we could do to improve our ‘working’ environment. Quickly we both saw a possible fix …location! We moved the shower caddy from the back corner to the front corner near the faucet where neither one of us stood or swung our elbows. An AH HAH moment, it was working but it could work better. Humans 1 shower caddy 0.
The point of this analogy is that no matter what you think may be working “just fine” it could be better. Whether it’s a few new employee accounts on your Exchange or Active Directory, an expansion of your wireless network or putting in a secondary firewall for redundancy and increase security. Whether it’s a new server adding some virtualization to improve management and reliability or investigating a new unified communications platform for your users an assessment of your environment with the support of a partner could make even a small change visible and therefore a major upgrade possible. The PEI team has some of the most amazing sets of IT eyes available to help you assess and as I tell all my clients “just because it’s working doesn’t mean it can’t be ‘fixed’”. Don’t miss an opportunity to help your organization by living on an old adage.
Jennifer Smith, PEI
