Small Business IT mistake 1: Torturing the office guru.

This is the first of our top ten small business mistakes. As part of the 2007 NSW Small Business Week I'll be posting these mistakes over the next few days.

None of the ten are in any particular order; every business is different so these mistakes affect businesses in different ways. The first we look at is putting too much on the office guru.
a. The mainstay of small business computing is the office guru. It’s rare to find an office that doesn’t have one. To a point, this is good for the business as there's always someone who can fix a password problem or clear a printer jam.

The guru’s usually the ideal employee; they are industrious, take initiative and get irritated when they can’t do their job. Usually they've become the guru because the computer systems got in their way.

So the office manager, bookkeeper or secretary becomes the designated guru. Now everyone in the office comes to them to fix paper jams, recover lost files and figure out how to insert pictures into powerpoint documents.

Your business will come to depend upon them. They are cheap, reliable and often your best employees. They are also the only one that knows how to avoid paper jams on the cranky Laserjet 4L you bought in 1996.

But they are still the office manager, bookkeeper or secretary. They have to do their main job as well as the IT.

Eventually the guru gets fed up. They are doing two jobs and only being paid for one. What's more, the IT support role is a demanding, time consuming and often thankless.

While most gurus become disaffected others become protective; the system is their baby. They’ve had to care for it, nurture it and sometimes resuscitate it. They've raised it from a tantrum throwing toddler to somewhat stable adulthood, although prone to strange episodes.

For the small business owner, it's usually a losing proposition; you end up losing good staff and you have a computer network that doesn't work well.

The smaller the business is, the worse the problem becomes. In the worst case, when the owner is the guru, the entire business suffers as the owner is fluffing around with the computers while the business drifts.

The solution for the business is to respect your employees and your IT investment. Get a proper tech to look after the system.

Usually when the tech arrives, they find the biggest problem is old equipment. Most guru run networks are lumbered with ancient systems. That's the topic of our next post.