For the past three years, we’ve had real problems with wi-fi coverage in our house. Despite buying boosters, connections would drop as we passed from room to room. My use of Zoom and Teams was, at best, sketchy, and every time I turned on Sky TV, I would have to spend two or three minutes re-launching the system.
I’ve finally done something about it and hired a firm to install a bespoke wi-fi system across the house, giving us perfect coverage all the time. It’s brilliant and, while I’m fully aware that this is a first-world problem, has improved both my business productivity and life in general.
The improvement has been so good, I’ve asked myself why I put up with the problem for so long. It’s like placing, filling and replacing a bucket under a leaking water-pipe ad nauseum, rather than fixing the damn leak or, even better, managing the pipework so the leak doesn’t happen in the first place.
I see similar issues in many business organisations. Inefficient and ineffective processes and activities that, over time, become accepted rather than addressed. Any questions or suggestions to improve the situation are met by a collective shrug of the shoulders and a feeling of ‘that’s just the way it is around here’.
What about your organisation or team? Where are you endlessly replacing a bucket under the leak when you should be fixing the pipework?
Please let me know. In the meantime, I’m off to sort out some flickering lights in the kitchen, poor phone reception, a sliding door that keeps jamming, some dining chairs with wobbly legs, blocked guttering……..
Off The Record: It’s Like That by Jason Nevins and Run-DMC
When you feel you fail sometimes, it hurts
For a meaning in life is why you search
Take the bus or the train, drive to school or the church
It’s like that, and that’s the way it is!
The Chief Officers’ Breakfast Club, 2023
The aim of the Breakfast Club is to provide senior and chief officers with a place to meet, gain new ideas and insights and learn from each other and our guest speakers. At the same time, the £500 membership fee has allowed Club to financially support 12 high-potential young athletes through our partner charity, SportsAid.
Over the past year, our special guests have included Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, Sir Will Adderley (the deputy-chairman, ex-CEO and majority shareholder of Dunelm plc) and Ian Filby, formerly the CEO of DFS plc.
I will be sharing more details about the 2023 programme in the next few weeks, but if you would like to join the group, please contact me at stuart@morgancross.co.uk or call me on 01636-526111. It would be great to have you join!