Health and Tech Aren’t So Different
Our President, Bruce Nelson Shares His Thoughts on the State of IT
Roughly 18 months ago I was getting bored with my workout routines and was interested in a change. I had a general idea what Crossfit was about, but until I walked in, I had no idea how it would challenge me and help me grow. I tell you this because I see a number of correlations between maintaining personal health and maintaining the health of the systems that enable us to run our organizations on a day to day basis. One of the foundations of Crossfit in particular is that the workouts change from day to day and week to week. This helps you to adapt and overcome weakness. It is also done in a class environment which creates accountability. We see the elements of constant change and accountability all the time as we work with clients to manage and secure their IT environments.
As like anything else, you get out of Crossfit and your IT systems what you put into them. For example I hear all the time, “I wish I had abs like that” in reference to some of the athletes in our gym. The interesting thing is that while others are wishing they had abs like that, those athletes are staying after doing extra core work a few day a week. They also take the extra time, away from the gym, to do a little more planning around meals and understanding nutrition. The athletes with the “abs” are not different from the others. They have busy, successful careers. They raise families and run kids to activities. The one exception is that instead of wishing they had abs, they make the investment of effort and probably a few extra dollars at the grocery store to attain them.
We see this particular phenomenon occur all the time. Organizations “wish” their IT systems ran better and improved their end user productivity. The problem is when you press these organizations on how they prioritize IT, if they have a consistent methodology to identify and adapt to change and what type of investment (time and/or money) they are willing to make, you quickly find out the answer is little or none. They are the people “wishing” they had abs.
We also see many of our clients with Abs. They’ve prioritized IT, work with us to create accountability and are willing to invest some time and resources to attain systems that enable their team to be productive while reducing their security risks. So the question is does your organization “wish” it had abs, or are you willing to attain them?