“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” — an English proverb credited to Bert Lance (1931-2013) in 1977.
I stick with this motto when it comes to almost everything, but most assuredly when it relates to the technology I use while doing business day-to-day. Do you want to see my productivity go down the toilet? Then change something that impacts my routine!
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I like to cook my own dinners. Often these dinners require some amount of chopping—of garlic, peppers, olives, tomatoes, parsley, etc. I’m so used to the chopping that I used to not think much about it, until I saw a nifty kitchen gadget called the Kitchen King Pro Manual Food Processor. For some reason, the hand crank appealed to me: I would still be prepping my food (deserving of thanks for my “hard work”), but it would be easier. So I bought one.
Recently we moved to a new house. Although we’ve moved quite a few times in the past, this move was different. In prior moves, we moved from one location to a new location—e.g. from Valencia, CA to Portland OR then to Coral Springs FL, etc. But this move was different because we moved from one condo to another condo in the same complex. Moving from the house in Virginia to the condo in Indiana was a challenging move and prompted us to discard, donate, or distribute to relatives a lot of our “stuff.” But this move was different. It was the first time our “stuff’ wasn’t loaded into a van and moved miles away.
This time, we patiently watched as the new place was being built. This time we were selecting flooring, faucets, tiles, you name it… And this is where all the problems started.
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On page 16 of the Virginia driver’s manual it states that when approaching or passing a person riding a bicycle, you should pass three feet to the left of the rider. As I ride, I see plenty of ambiguous “share the road” and “3 feet please” signs. Fortunately, most drivers these days seem to get it right: for example, on two-lane country roads, passing with the driver’s tires on or near the double yellow line works well. Three feet is roughly an arms reach, so assuming road conditions allow me to ride near the white line, the driver can line up their shoulder with the center lines and be virtually assured of giving me more than the intended three feet.
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In my professional life, I have attended a number of summits and conferences related to software. I remember that at one of these, a number of top company principals and CEOs held an analyst panel. During their question-and-answer session they talked about how companies that buy new software systems don’t want just new software–they want new business processes.
