How Playing With Puzzles Enhanced Our Business

Running an IT company involves a lot of analytic thinking, problem solving, and seeing how the different pieces work together to achieve goals. It takes a lot of patience, skill, and vision. So do jigsaw puzzles.

When is the last time that you solved a jigsaw puzzle? There are some fairly astonishing health benefits that come with solving jigsaw puzzles. Regularly piecing together puzzles has been proven to decrease brain dementia and memory loss, act as a stress reliever, and even ultimately contribute to living a longer life. We believe that many of the same benefits and principles of solving puzzles can be applied to laying down the IT framework of your business.

When solving a puzzle, there are rules and guidelines you can follow to make the process quicker, easier, and more enjoyable. There is much to learn from this process that translates to piecing together the framework of your IT business. Here are four things that we've applied to our business from solving a jigsaw puzzle.

1. Focus on the Perimeter
The first step in solving a puzzle is throwing all the pieces on the table, flipping them to the side with the print, and staring at the box with the overall picture. Then, you'll want to strategically separate all of the pieces by how many straight-edged sides they have, find the four corners, and start building the perimeter. Let's translate this first step to your business; you'll need to lay down your technological structure. You'll need to piece together all of the factors that lay out the groundwork for your IT headquarters; budget, space, time, employees, preferences, etc. You have to do this without focusing on this perimeter of your business, your further efforts will prove to be more difficult.

2. Prioritize the Big Things
Once you have the perimeter of your puzzle pieces in place, you'll want to separate the rest according to colors, and focus on the biggest object in the picture. For instance, if the puzzle is forming a picture of a hot air balloon in the night sky, you'll want to separate all the bright colors of the balloon from the dull colors of the night sky. Since the balloon is the focal point of the image, you'll want to focus on putting that together before piecing together the night sky. In terms of your IT framework, your server is the focal point of the picture. You'll need to select a server that fits your company's budget, while allowing room for the growth of your company for at least the next five years.

3. Work Out the Details
After you have the balloon all pieced together, it's time to focus on the secondary elements in the puzzle. Now is the time to focus on the moon, and the silhouettes of the clouds, and position them in the correct place according to the image on the box. Inevitably, the puzzle starts coming together and looking like it was intended. Translated to your IT framework, now that you've initialized your servers, you can begin focusing on the subsequent pieces of equipment, like workstations, routers, and other pieces that fit your business' picture.

4. Finish Up and Show Off
With all of the other steps in place, your puzzle is near complete. All that remains are the filler pieces that may have been forgotten about and dropped on the floor. Once you fit in these last pieces, you're finished. It's then time for you to show off to your amazing puzzle skills. Similarly, fill in the remainders of your IT framework, and show it off to your prospects and clients!

Much like puzzles, business strategies are much easier when you've outlined them beforehand. Without them, you'll most likely end up being frustrated, overwhelmed, and may not even finish the puzzle. Having a plan for setting up your IT framework will save you time, money, and effort in the long run. We're puzzle champions at Computerware, which has surprisingly made us business strategy champions. If you need assistance with carrying out your vision, or just need a friend to help solve a jigsaw puzzle, give us a call at (703) 821-8200.