Some of us have a garage. And some of us use it as storage for things we don’t want to see. The rest of you will have to just use your imagination.
You’ve seen an ad on an architecture firm doing remodeling of garages to a new hip space. Maybe you want some new spare room for your kid, gym, or gaming room.
So you get in touch with the firm, pay for some initial designs, all excited about the new space.
Until you actually open your garage… and it’s a mess. 10s of years worth of boxes, old electronics, those old carpets which “you could use one day”, old gym equipment you’ve bought after wanting a “six-pack in just 6 weeks?!”. Maybe even a dead possum.
The consultants come around, look at it, and tell you to clean it up first. Their job is only remodeling the empty space.
So, what do you do? Well, you could hire a different architecture firm, but you probably guessed that 10s of different designs won’t solve the problem you have.
“Let’s tackle the problem!” The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem. Apparently.
Dealing with the garage mess you can do a combination of the following:
1) Throw everything away.
2) Go through all the boxes, look at every paper, and decide what you are going to do with it.
3) Hire a company to clean it up.
Have you been diligent enough to throw everything away? Are you sure you don’t have there any important paperwork related to your house, birth, car, or just letters from your high school pen pal, which got you through some tough time?
Since you are aware that you probably can’t just throw everything away, since you didn’t follow any strict rules to what goes into the garage, you’ll start considering point two.
Oooh, that pain that you feel from spending days going through all the paperwork. All those insurance papers you’ll have to read, all those old phones which still work, but you kept them just in case your new phone breaks.
You think to yourself. I work hard, so I don’t have to deal with these tedious things. I’ll hire a company to clean it up. I’ll give them a list of what has to stay and what should go.
Your list:
Keep: paper related to house, car, warranty, working gym equipment, and those letters which you randomly remembered
Throw away: Clothes, furniture, old electronics
Cool, problem solved! Now bring that new hip space to my house!
Cleaning guys will show up, you’ve made yourselves a hot mug of chocolate and watch the work from distance.
The first box is opened. They come to you holding old medals from high school table tennis tournament.
“Mate, this is not on the list, but we feel like you might have forgotten about it. Do you want to throw it away?”
“Oh, sorry, yeah, can you keep all trophies? I’ll add it to the list.”
10 minutes later.
“Seems like some kids drawing, do you want to keep it?”
“Oh, yeah, keep the drawings.”
“All of them? Are you sure? There are 3 boxes full of them?”
“Ok, let me go through them and decide.” …there goes your hot cocoa and next three hours.
“There is this fancy jacket, do you mind if I keep it rather than throw away?” Asks one of the guys.
“This is awkward, I didn’t mean to throw it away, I just forgot it was there. GIVE IT BACK!” Going for it like Bilbo after the ring.
You start quickly going through the boxes with clothes, looking at each of them, throwing them around. Still paying for the guys to just watch you all confused.
How relieved you are that you looked when you have found the matching t-shirts you bought at a music festival where you first met your wife. Humming Creed melodies to yourself… good times.
If the analogy is not clear by now.
We don’t create a perfect filing mechanism, because not everything fit into a simple category. We also start with one box but over time we might change the mechanism or someone else will start packing boxes and leaving them in a garage. Did they do exactly what you had on your mind those three years ago? Most likely not.
We move boxes to the garage, so we don’t have to look at them every day. How annoyed are you when you can’t find something and think to yourself? “Oh god, it must be somewhere in the garage… or attic… I haven’t even thought about the attic!”
To wrap this up. The garage in this analogy is your CRM, ERP, Accounting, HR, or basically any system you have in your organization. All of them are houses and all of them have their own garages.
Just above average 