I recently had a conversation with a small business owner here in Billings. Her business has experienced tremendous growth over the past few years, and it’s obvious (from both a consulting and a customer’s perspective) that they need some help managing it. Luckily, the owner has realized this and is looking for some help.

But she’s moving forward in a manner that I see all too often. She’s going to spend money, time and effort doing things that are not going to help her run her business very much better.

How do I know this? Let’s look and what she told me her problems are and what’s she’s doing to fix them…

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On Friday night, I turned on my laptop and was unable to boot into Windows. Error messages got progressively worse with everything I tried and everything I found on Google led to a “you’re screwed…reload Windows” diagnosis. Considering that one of my early posts was about preparing for technology failure, I had a decent handle on getting everything restored. But now I have another thing to add to the plan:

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As today is Blog Action Day, I thought I’d write about a simple environmental action that every SMB can take.  Here in Billings, the local government finds it perfectly acceptable to throw your old PCs, monitors and other electronic equipment in the dumpster.  Trash collection here will take just about anything.  But the fact is that old PCs, monitors, printers, cell phones, PDAs and other electronic equipment contain many materials that are harmful to the environment or to humans.  The EPA estimates 1-4% of all municipal waste is due to old electronic equipment.  So do us all a favor and recycle that old junk!

There are plenty of ways to dispose of your old equipment in a safe, inexpensive and responsible manner.  Here are just a few:

• Donate old PCs to local non-profits.  Computer4Kids is a great cause in the Billings, MT.  They refurbish your old equipment and give them to at-risk youth in our area.  Any equipment that can’t be used is broken down for parts and recycled.
• Pay someone to recycle electronic equipment for you.  Just check the Yellow Pages for lots of options.
• Tap into a PC manufacturer’s recycling program.  Dell has a great program where they will recycle your old equipment for free when you purchase a system from them.

One final note, if you store sensitive information on your PC, make sure you at least format your hard drive before passing it on.  If you’ve got really sensitive information on there, you might actually want to remove the hard drive altogether.  A hammer or mallet will make quick work of making sure nobody can ever get that data!

This is a blog about technology for the small and mid-sized business. So when I read a recent Harvard Business Review article about decisions IT executives should not be making, I had to comment. The article intends to say that well-meaning IT executives can’t possibly be responsible for the business impacts of their decisions. So they should stick to the technical details and let the rest of the executive suite worry about the success of the business.

I’m no Harvard MBA, but Ms. Ross and Mr. Weill have it all wrong. Companies that follow their advice are doomed to mediocre IT performance. Here are the six decisions they say are best left to non-IT execs, and why I think they’re off-base.

HBR: “How much should we spend on IT?”

Reality: Does the head of marketing decide how much to spend on accounting staff or tools? No. If your CIO or head of IT is not capable of understanding your business goals and planning a budget to meet those needs, then you’ve got the wrong person in that position.

HBR: “Which business processes should receive our IT dollars?”

Reality: It’s smart to selectively approve IT projects. But don’t forget that most IT funds are spent maintaining existing systems or on infrastructure requirements. Business executives forget about last year’s projects much less that project from 5 years ago.

HBR: “Which IT capabilities should be firmwide?”

Reality: This statement blatantly contradicts the author’s assertion that technical implementation details should be left to the IT execs. Again, if your CIO is not capable of understanding your business enough to develop an operational model that supports it, you need a new CIO.

HBR: “How good do our IT services need to be?”

Reality: The authors suggest to not let IT execs push for the “Cadillac” when a “Buick” is all that’s needed. Are you kidding me? Certainly all executives like to provide the best tools possible to their teams. But just try to imagine the CFO allowing the CIO or head of marketing to state how good the accounting services need to be!

HBR: “What security and privacy risks will we accept?”

Reality: Of the 6 points, this one is actually the most reasonable. The business needs to understand and accept the tradeoffs between convenience and security. But it’s the CIO’s responsibility to educate the business and help them find that balance. After all, the CIO is likely to be named in any HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley lawsuit!

HBR: “Whom do we blame if an IT initiative fails?”

Reality: If you’re thinking this way, it’s a bad sign for your business. Change your mindset now. You should be thinking, “How can I help ensure that IT initiatives helping me achieve my goals are a success.”

In the end, the HBR article fails to comprehend the true nature of IT’s role in the enterprise today. To be sure, there are companies who run their IT departments this way. But we know that companies that use IT strategically grow faster and are more profitable than those who don’t. Viewing the IT department as a cost center that needs to be tightly controlled by non-IT executives is certainly not a strategic way to do business.

Two recent articles I read form a fascinating contradiction. Naomi Grossman on bMighty reviews a Rubicon Consulting report that the technology and philosophies of small to mid-sized businesses. Apparently SMBs don’t like the term and actively shun products targeted to their use.

…many small and midsize businesses don’t like ‘less aspirational’ names like ‘Small Business Edition’ or ‘Starter edition’. Some even find those titles vaguely insulting. Surprise, surprise — many smaller companies look to buy the ‘Enterprise edition’ whenever they can afford it.

Contrast this with Rob Preston’s column about simplifying your technology. We all know large businesses that suffer from bloated infrastructure and overly customized applications. Regardless of the ownership costs, it’s hard to rip these things out once their firmly embedded in your organization.

So SMBs tend to prefer the complex “enterprise” versions of software while large corporations struggle against overly complicated technology. See the link here?

The answer, I believe, lies in an organization’s commitment from the very start to keep their processes as simplified as possible. I have no real statistic to quote here, but I’m sure that something like 90% of what Business A does must be exactly the same as Business B. Accounting, HR, IT, even Sales. It doesn’t matter where you go, those functions are basically the same.

If you’re building a business today, approach your non-core activities by finding the best practice solution and adopting it. Period. That 20% that doesn’t fit what your company already does? Forget about it. We’re talking about your non-core activities. They don’t offer you any competitive advantage. So putting in all the workarounds to get that 80% closer to 100% only increases your complexity. You’re going to regret that someday.