I\u2019m a big fan of the TV show The Office<\/i>. In my opinion, it\u2019s the second funniest series behind Seinfeld<\/i> (and it\u2019s a very close second). Dunder Mifflin Scranton Regional Manager Michael Scott is a quintessential example of a decision maker who\u2019s against the adoption of new technologies because of fear, a lack of understanding, and downright stubbornness. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In the \u201cDunder Mifflin Infinity\u201d episode in Season Four, the young, newly promoted hot-shot exec (and former intern) Ryan Howard returns to the Scranton branch to reveal his plan on how he\u2019s going to use technology to revitalize the company. Part of his plan is the rollout of a new website that will allow Dunder Mifflin to be more agile and allow customers to make purchases online. Michael and his loyal sidekick (<\/span>and part-time beet farmer<\/span><\/a>) Dwight Schrute are staunchly opposed to this idea. <\/span><\/p>\n At this point in the episode Michael is against Ryan\u2019s idea of leveraging technology to improve the business process out of pure stubbornness. Michael hasn\u2019t heard Ryan\u2019s strategy or thought out the pros and cons of leveraging technology to improve business processes. His mindset is simply \u201cHow can this new technology possibly be better than the way we have always done things?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Maybe your company has always bought infrastructure and run it in house\u2014so why change now? Well, running a <\/span>hybrid cloud environment<\/span><\/a> can provide better service to your end users and also contribute to cost savings. Regardless if you act or not, it\u2019s something you need to keep an open mind about and look into closely. Dismissing the concept immediately isn\u2019t going to do you any good.<\/span><\/p>\n Creed Bratton is the oldest employee in the Scranton office. After hearing Ryan\u2019s announcement about implementing new technologies, Creed gets extremely worried that he\u2019s going to get squeezed out of his job. He goes to Michael and shares his concerns that both their jobs may be in jeopardy. At this point, Michael is now against the adoption of technology due to a lack of understanding. Ryan\u2019s plan is to retrain his employees so that they have the knowledge and skillset to leverage new technologies to improve the business\u2014not to use it as a means to downsize the workforce. <\/span><\/p>\n This is similar to the fear that cloud computing will cause widespread layoffs of IT workers. This is not necessarily the case. It\u2019s not about reducing jobs; it\u2019s about retraining current employees to take on new roles within the department.<\/span><\/p>\n Ryan claims that the new website is going to significantly increase sales. Michael and Dwight set out on a road trip to win back several key customers whose accounts they have recently lost to competitors to prove to Ryan that they don\u2019t need a website. Their strategy? Personally deliver fruit baskets. Each customer ends up turning them down because the vendors they are currently using have websites and offer lower prices. <\/span><\/p>\n In this case, Dunder Mifflin\u2019s lack of IT innovation is directly affecting its bottom line. They\u2019re making it an easy decision for customers to leave because they simply aren\u2019t keeping pace with the competition. As a modern day IT department, you need to be leveraging technologies that allow people to do their jobs easier and in turn reduce costs for the organization. For example, by installing a SaaS-based marketing automation tool (i.e. <\/span>HubSpot<\/span><\/a>), your marketing team can automate workloads and spend more time generating leads for the sales team to drive revenue. By using Amazon, or another IaaS platform, you have the ability to buy only the capacity you actually need, saving on infrastructure hardware capital and maintenance costs. For workloads that make more sense running on-prem, creating a private cloud environment with a service catalog can streamline performance and give users the ability to choose and instantly receive the IT services they need. <\/span><\/p>\n At the end of the episode, an enraged Michael and Dwight head back to the office. On their way back, Michael\u2019s GPS instructs him to <\/span>take a right hand turn<\/span><\/a>. Dwight looks at the screen and tells Michael that it\u2019s saying to bear right around the bend, but Michael takes the sharp right trusting the machine and follows it\u2026directly into a lake. Dwight shouts that he\u2019s trained for this moment and jumps in the two feet of water to valiantly save Michael. When they get back to the office Michael announces \u201cI drove my car into a [bleep] lake. Why you may ask did I do this? Well, because of a machine. A machine told me to drive into a lake. And I did it! I did it because I trusted Ryan’s precious technology, and look where it got me.\u201d At this point, Michael is resisting technology because of fear. <\/span><\/p>\n In today\u2019s <\/span>changing IT landscape<\/span><\/a>, embarking on new IT initiatives can be scary. There are risks involved, and there are going to be bumps along the way. (Full disclosure, Ryan ends up <\/span>getting arrested<\/span><\/a> later in the season for fraud after placing orders multiple times in the system\u2014but you get the idea.)But at the end of the day, the change now taking place in IT is inevitable. To be successful, you need to carefully, and strategically, plan out projects and make sure you have the skillsets to get the job done properly (or use a partner like <\/span>GreenPages<\/span><\/a> to help).The risk of adopting new technologies is nothing compared to the risk of doing nothing and being left behind. Leave a comment and share how your organization is dealing with the changing IT landscape\u2026or let me know what your favorite Office episode is\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019d like to talk more about how GreenPages can help with your IT transformation strategy, fill out this form<\/a>!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n By Ben Stephenson, Journey to the Cloud One of the biggest impediments to the adoption of new technologies is resistance to change. Many IT departments are entrenched and content in the way they currently run IT. But as the technology industry continues to embrace IT-as-a-Service, IT departments must be receptive to change if they…Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,253,47],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-10240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-iaas","category-it-management","tag-cloud"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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