The word malfunction was made truly famous a few Super Bowls ago with Janet Jackson’s Wardrobe Malfunction. Unlike the malfunction of the wardrobe variety, a technological malfunction is no laughing matter.
I had a humbling experience on Friday that caused me to stop a think for a moment. My work laptop decided it had enough of this life and wanted to move on; without me. Yes blue screen of death. Like most large companies the server backs up your email; so there was no issue there. However, by sum freak technological glitch the rest of my hard-drive was inaccessible. The IT department is working on retrieving as much as possible. For a few moments on Friday morning I was totally dependent on the IT department. My success was no longer in my hands.
How many of us are totally dependent of technology for our continued success? With all of the IT touch-points in our lives today; does it ever occur to us how reliant we are? I don't want to launch into a rant about how we should all go back to rolodexes. Some of you might be ‘Googling’ rolodex to even figure out what one is. The idea is simple; the more technology evolves the more it allows us to move away from paper. Except that is, until the tech breaks.
I have made it a habit from job to job and company to company to keep an excel file of my contacts printed in paper as a back-up. Sure external hard drives and USB sticks are great; until you lose them. The key idea here is to not put your career in the balance. Sure you can get information back; but it takes time. That time can cause loss of productivity; not to mention stress.
If you lose your IPhone, Blackberry, or laptop the immediate panic sets into your body quicker than you would ever imagine. If you have key contacts on paper in hard copy you can continue with only a momentary interruption.
I can hear the techie’s going ‘I back everything up, I am covered.’ There are extremes that even the most prepared people can’t plan for. I am not an extremist by any means. I know that when my laptop screen turned blue I was panicked. The entire plan for the day had changed. I was no-longer in charge of my calendar, mainly because it was in Outlook inside my retched little computer that would not respond.
Take charge of your intellectual information and reduce your downtime if you ever experience a major tech malfunction. Record key contacts, phone numbers, email addresses and print them in hard copy. I would strongly suggest you keep theis file with you in your briefcase because you never really know when you will need to use it.
Like I said, I have a back-up file with all key names and phone numbers that I keep at my house. It did me no good when I was sitting in the office at 7am with a dead computer and no one in IT in the building before 8am. I wished I had had my printed excel file with me so I could have made calls and kept my day on track. Going forward I will and hopefully you will do the same.
When was the last time you had to recover lost files?
Have you ever lost your phone with all your key customer contacts in?
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