As a business owner, the start of a new year is the perfect time to evaluate what’s working and what isn’t. While you’re looking at sales targets and marketing budgets, don’t overlook one of the most critical parts of your operation: your information technology.
Too often, IT is an afterthought, a problem to be solved only when something breaks. But as I discuss in my book, Near Miss, this reactive mindset leaves your business dangerously exposed.
Instead of waiting for a crisis, you can make a few strategic resolutions today that will set you up for a more secure, efficient, and profitable year. Here are three things every small business owner should do to get their IT environment on the right track.
Resolution 1: Stop Viewing IT as a Cost. Start Seeing It as a Force Multiplier.
The single most important change you can make this year has nothing to do with technology itself. It is about your mindset. For too long, business leaders have viewed IT as a burdensome cost center, a necessary evil to be minimized. The goal becomes finding the cheapest provider or putting off upgrades for as long as possible.
This approach is fundamentally flawed. As I’ve seen countless times, choosing the lowest bid often leads to “near miss” scenarios, where a lack of quality and security creates far greater costs down the road through data breaches, downtime, and lost reputation.
This year, reframe the question. Instead of asking, “How can we spend less on IT?” ask, “How can our technology make us more profitable?“
When planned and executed correctly, your IT strategy becomes a force multiplier. It streamlines operations, empowers your team to work more efficiently, and provides the secure foundation you need to grow. This shift from a cost-cutting mentality to an investment mindset is the first step toward building a truly resilient business.
Resolution 2: Ask the “What If?” Question About Your IT Knowledge.
Here is a simple question that can reveal a massive risk in your business: What happens if our main IT person quits or is unavailable tomorrow?
In far too many companies, all the critical knowledge, such as server passwords, network configurations, and security protocols, exists only in one person’s head. As I detail in Chapter 2 of Near Miss, this lack of documentation makes your business incredibly fragile. The departure of a key employee can instantly trigger a crisis, forcing you to waste weeks or even months scrambling to reconstruct essential information.
Your Action Step for the New Year: Start a conversation with your IT provider about documentation. Ask them these questions:
- How is our critical IT information being documented?
- Who has access to it?
- How is it secured, and what is the plan if our primary contact is unavailable?
Good documentation is the bedrock of business continuity. It ensures that your operations can continue smoothly, no matter who is at the helm. Do not let your company’s institutional knowledge walk out the door.
Resolution 3: Audit for “Rogue AI” and Shadow IT.
Your employees are trying to be productive. In their quest for efficiency, they might be using new tools without your knowledge. This is “Shadow IT,” the unsanctioned use of software, apps, and now, AI tools.
As I cover in Chapter 11 of Near Miss, the rise of “free” AI platforms presents a huge risk. When employees feed company data, client information, or proprietary strategies into a free AI tool, that information can become part of the AI’s training data. This can lead to devastating data leakage and loss of your intellectual property. You have no control over where your data goes or how it is used.
This is not a hypothetical problem. It is happening right now in businesses everywhere.
Your Action Step for the New Year: Work with your IT provider to get a clear picture of what’s running on your network.
- Ask for an audit of applications being used across the company.
- Establish a clear policy on the use of external tools, especially AI platforms.
- Educate your team on the dangers of using unapproved software and AI.
- Provide your employees with secure, approved tools that help them do their jobs effectively so they do not have to seek out their own.
Gaining visibility into Shadow IT is critical for protecting your sensitive information. It allows you to harness the power of new technologies safely without exposing your business to unnecessary risk.
By focusing on these three resolutions of reframing your mindset, securing your knowledge, and taking control of your software environment, you can move your business from a reactive to a proactive IT strategy. You’ll not only prevent the “near misses” that threaten your security but also build a stronger, more resilient organization ready for the year ahead.
This post is adapted from core themes in the book Near Miss: Preventable IT Failures Threatening Your Business Security. Get your copy to help build a complete, strategic IT roadmap for your business.
