Positivity in Adversity

A day in the life of that lucky person to be working during these times.

Like a lot of people in the current climate, I’m grateful to still have my job. Such has been the disruption to all facets of the normal everyday existence that we had grown accustomed to, that to assume anything around employment would have been blasé. These are uncertain times and that uncertainty won’t be leaving any time soon but what is amazing about us humans is that we are all looking to the future while embracing how we live our lives in the situation we find ourselves in. We are taking more notice of what is important in life and who those that are most important in life are. At times it has felt like something of a re-calibration of that famed “work\life balance” we all seek and for a lot of us, we will come out of this with a new perspective.

However, let’s go back to the office. During this lockdown there are various strategies and plans being drawn up and put in place. We are all looking to see where the business can be in twelve months, “when we’re out of this” or when “things go back to normal”. If things don’t fully return to normal, we are looking to innovate and identify what will be the new normal and how we will position ourselves for success. The speed at which so many companies have had to react and embrace the cloud and remote working has seen a change in the way that companies view their IT strategy. A recent article on TechCentral.ie showed that 62% of Irish IT decision makers now view digitalising their infrastructure as a priority, with 57% planning to do so in the next 12mths. Fortunately, we are well positioned to deliver this service. Having been engaged in digitally driven projects for almost a decade now, we know what is required, we recognize the business goals and we work together with clients to achieve them.

Clearing the Long Finger backlog.

During the current restrictions, it is however a very good time to identify some things that may be important but always seem to end up on the long finger, pushed down the priority list at every turn. These projects often involve the tasks we don’t enjoy doing, the ones we find boring , where the benefits are not always immediately apparent. One I heard mentioned recently was Data Cleansing. For “dataphiles” it may sound refreshing, yet there is no cleansing of the mind and soul for the now “unlucky” resources assigned to the task.

The current situation presents us with an opportune time to embark on a data-cleansing exercise. From a business perspective, this need to be done for reporting and analytics etc. From a user perspective, operating from the software team it is a bug that grates us every day when we see the anomalies in our data, because we understand some of the knock-on effects dirty data can have.

This brings me back almost full circle. From the yin of feeling lucky to still have employment; to the yang of feeling unlucky to have the cleansing tasks assigned; back to the yin of knowing that the monotonous task is solving the anomalies in the data for the greater good. Therefore “I am lucky”.

Stay positive out there folks, while it is not always apparent, there is good in everything that comes your way, and remember, when it starts to rain again the flowers and veg will need a good watering so enjoy it… while I remain cleaning up this data.

Has your business made the most of the opportunity to get through tasks that have been put on the long finger? Is there anything that you have been thinking about doing but never had a chance to get around to it? If there is anything that we can assist with or provide advice on, we are here, and we are ready to help. Get in touch.