It Gets the Job Done
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Again, I am not defending QBs. I've honestly never really used it. It could be HORRIBLE.
But it's like the argument where OpenOffice is the only option because it is free and has similar features. It doesn't mean MS Office is bad.
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@DustinB3403 said:
But a CEO is not an IT Person. He is not the expert. He would hire skilled IT persons (hopefully) to tell him to not do something such as that.
That's a red herring. The CEO's job is to make the company profitable. Hiring and relying on a mixture of IT advisers, financial advisers and good business decision making is what he is there to do. Whether the CEO is being reckless and making IT decisions that he does not understand, can't be bothered to listen to good advice, won't pay for the needed skills or whatever ultimate is his responsibility. It is assumed that the CEO is not IT. Successful companies do not see that as a problem. There is no need for a CEO to be in IT for a company to have good IT strategies.
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@BRRABill said:
But it's like the argument where OpenOffice is the only option because it is free and has similar features. It doesn't mean MS Office is bad.
True and totally unrelated. That MS Office is a good product has no relevance to the fact that IT and business people not bothering to do their jobs is bad. There is no conceptual relationship here.
This is like saying that putting sugar in your gas tank is bad and responding that just because Ford is great, doesn't make Chevy bad. Sure, but what does the price of gas in Oregon matter to a cupcake baker in Germany?
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@scottalanmiller Well lets step away from the CEO approach. (You have more experience then I here).
Let look at the Wedding Planner.
The Planner's job, is to arrange the wedding, transportation, flowers, music.
The Planner's job does not include that the couple get married.
It can't be, the planner might have done an awful job, for which you're rightfully owed money back.
In the case that the Planner failed at their job (Planning and coordinating the wedding event) is completely detached from the fact they the couple got married.
The two aren't attached. It could have been an Amazing Wedding, and the couple decides to call it off, the planner still gets paid for their services.
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@BRRABill said:
But for most businesses, QBs job is to print check, sends invoices, and do payroll.
Not to ensure the company is a success.
This is exactly what I mean by getting lost in proximate goals and losing sight of the actual goals. EVERYTHING a business does is to ensure company success. Literally everything. If any action is taken for another reason, that means that that action should be stopped. If QB is being implemented against the needs of the business intentionally, that is sabotage and should not happen.
This is the exact concept this thread is about - don't confuse a proximate goal with the ultimate goal. You would not implement QB if you knew if would cause immediate bankruptcy, right? Why would you do it if you only knew it "wasn't in the interest of the business" but wouldn't directly cause total failure? Both cases are the same, one is just more immediate and obvious.
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@DustinB3403 said:
@scottalanmiller Well lets step away from the CEO approach. (You have more experience then I here).
Let look at the Wedding Planner.
The Planner's job, is to arrange the wedding, transportation, flowers, music.
The Planner's job does not include that the couple get married.
It's not the IT or the business' job to print checks, do the taxes or make payroll. That's finance. IT and the business acquire, implement and manage the tools for doing it. So very, very much like the wedding planner.
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The relation is, I feel your argument is like saying
"Why would you ever use MS Office? OpenOffice is basically the same, and most companies using MS Office are just wasting money."
It IS true. But like the other thread stated, it's not like people need to be tar and feathered for it.
Now, there ARE scenarios that you are 100% right. Take the RAID5 for example. Instances where hard data has shown something to cause significant danger or loss. Or say someone wanted to come in and charge $100K to design a custom-made office applcation suite for you.
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@DustinB3403 said:
The two aren't attached. It could have been an Amazing Wedding, and the couple decides to call it off, the planner still gets paid for their services.
Just like IT. Bring in IT consultants, they help you out and you decide to shut down the business because you decide that your business plan was poor. You still pay the IT firm, it's not their fault.
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@BRRABill said:
The relation is, I feel your argument is like saying
"Why would you ever use MS Office? OpenOffice is basically the same, and most companies using MS Office are just wasting money."
No, this is a completely disconnected leap. You've taken a discussion about "clear decision making" and are trying to say "MS Office is bad." I don't agree that it is bad and see zero connection to the discussion. If you want to talk about MS Office being a product so bad that no honest business person would purchase it, that deserve a thread to discuss. But it doesn't relate here.
There is nothing in this conversation that should trigger a thought like this.
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@scottalanmiller said:
You would not implement QB if you knew if would cause immediate bankruptcy, right?
Of course not.
Why would you do it if you only knew it "wasn't in the interest of the business" but wouldn't directly cause total failure? Both cases are the same, one is just more immediate and obvious.
Have we ever officially established QB is so imminently disastrous?
And again, if we were starting out with a fresh company, of course we'd give them a myriad of options. But to try and get an established QB company to move just because ... there are better options which might save them a few bucks? I'm not sure that's a fair argument.
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I completely skipped this entire thread after the examples. The examples are completely not what "It gets the job done" means. Those examples were all 100% deliberately sabotaged jobs.
"It gets the job done" does not mean sabotaging the job. It means that the product does the job it is needed to do. It does certainly leave room for a job to be done better.
@scottalanmiller if you want to start this over and be willing to have an intelligent conversation based on real examples, I will participate.
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@BRRABill said:
It IS true. But like the other thread stated, it's not like people need to be tar and feathered for it.
I don't know many people that would agree that that is true. Not from the business or the IT side. Lots of people will agree that MS Office is not the only solution. I've never talked to any seasoned pro who felt it was universally evil and had no value scenario.
This isn't the place for MS Office bashing, start about thread and we can discuss its merits or lack thereof there.
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@scottalanmiller said:
No, this is a completely disconnected leap. You've taken a discussion about "clear decision making" and are trying to say "MS Office is bad." I don't agree that it is bad and see zero connection to the discussion. If you want to talk about MS Office being a product so bad that no honest business person would purchase it, that deserve a thread to discuss. But it doesn't relate here.
There is nothing in this conversation that should trigger a thought like this.
You don't think there are members here who think it is foolish to use MS Windows or MS Office when there are viable free alternatives out there? And that decision, considering the cost of both Windows and Office, could be a sabotage to the business?
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@scottalanmiller said:
This isn't the place for MS Office bashing, start about thread and we can discuss its merits or lack thereof there.
I am saying the opposite.
I'm saying that as long as MS Office "gets the job done" (what most people are looking for it to do ... e-mailing, letters, spreadsheets) it still has value. You don't have to move to OpenOffice just because it saves the company a few dollars.
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@JaredBusch said:
I completely skipped this entire thread after the examples. The examples are completely not what "It gets the job done" means. Those examples were all 100% deliberately sabotaged jobs.
"It gets the job done" does not mean sabotaging the job. It means that the product does the job it is needed to do. It does certainly leave room for a job to be done better.
@scottalanmiller if you want to start this over and be willing to have an intelligent conversation based on real examples, I will participate.
I picked these because they are exactly alike. How are they different?
We constantly see IT pros doing "whatever other people do" and providing zero guidance of their own - literally not doing their job at all. Many try to do a good job but get it all wrong like the wedding planner.
These are, I feel, incredibly close examples. If you have better examples, please share. But these were chosen because of how close they are. Based off of the example of ignoring the needs of the business goals and just using a proximate "success" metric that does not support the business goals directly and using it to excuse either IT or the business managers of not doing their jobs either on purpose, accidentally or just doing it poorly.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
No, this is a completely disconnected leap. You've taken a discussion about "clear decision making" and are trying to say "MS Office is bad." I don't agree that it is bad and see zero connection to the discussion. If you want to talk about MS Office being a product so bad that no honest business person would purchase it, that deserve a thread to discuss. But it doesn't relate here.
There is nothing in this conversation that should trigger a thought like this.
You don't think there are members here who think it is foolish to use MS Windows or MS Office when there are viable free alternatives out there? And that decision, considering the cost of both Windows and Office, could be a sabotage to the business?
Okay, maybe, but I'm not aware of any. PLEASE take this to another thread. It has no place here at all.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
This isn't the place for MS Office bashing, start about thread and we can discuss its merits or lack thereof there.
I am saying the opposite.
I'm saying that as long as MS Office "gets the job done" (what most people are looking for it to do ... e-mailing, letters, spreadsheets) it still has value. You don't have to move to OpenOffice just because it saves the company a few dollars.
If OpenOffice really does save money, why would you intentionally not move to it? I'm going off of your assumption that it will save money instead of it might save money in some cases. I don't agree with your assumption even though I am a huge LibreOffice fan - I think that MS Office has extremely viable use cases and might be the best product maybe even most of the time, at least much of the time.
But using your assumption that MS Office is always bad, then it is always bad. If you know this, why would you ever implement it knowing that doing so would sabotage the business?
How are you defining "getting the job done" if the job isn't for the business to be successful?
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@BRRABill said:
I'm saying that as long as MS Office "gets the job done" (what most people are looking for it to do ... e-mailing, letters, spreadsheets)
All people in business have one goal - to make the business money. ANY skewing from this is bad. Not that proximate goals are not needed to achieve the bigger goal, but confusing proximate goals with ultimate goals is very bad and that's how bad decision making starts to happen.
The job of the company is to make money, not to email people.
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@BRRABill said:
Have we ever officially established QB is so imminently disastrous?
This is not an appropriate thread to mention products. This is about goals and decision making. There is a thread for discussing individual products.
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@BRRABill said:
But to try and get an established QB company to move just because ... there are better options which might save them a few bucks? I'm not sure that's a fair argument.
Let me rephrase this statement as we would present it at the annual shareholder's meeting:
We found a better option that would lower our risk and make you, the shareholders, more profit but we didn't feel like doing it so we didn't.
That's how a shareholder would hear that statement.
