What’s on my mind? Laundry, integrations and shortcuts

When our kids turned 13, we gave them the keys to - the washing machine :).

We taught them to separate their laundry into whites, darks and colours. We showed them how to use stain remover and what products to use to get whites white and keep colours bright. We taught them how to read labels, what temperature to wash in and how to line dry or air fluff :)

From 13, until they left the nest and went to university, they understood the right way to do laundry. If they wanted clean clothes, they had to do it themselves!

After 21 years as a stay-at-home dad, my husband has probably washed more than 1,000 loads of laundry. He taught our kids how to stay ahead of what seems to be an infinite pile of dirty clothes, and over the years, I have had few complaints.

Until this past weekend - sorry Tyson, I’m throwing you under the bus!

I started folding my white clothes and found my white face cloths were an interesting blue-cloud colour. I then picked up my favourite pair of white sweatpants, which were also cloud blue. Ugh!

Needless to say, I was not happy. Clearly, some corners had been cut, the jeans and white laundry combined into one load. The question is why? After all, Tyson taught our kids all his laundry secrets and knows perfectly well how to do it.

So why take a shortcut now? There’s a simple answer, time and energy. We had two small piles and it was faster to combine them than to do them separately. The reason was completely logical, but as any good Italian knows this is like mixing oil and vinegar, they need to be separated!

So, what to do with cloud blue sweats? I soaked them in laundry bleach for three hours but this did not work, so I had to get innovative! Thanks to social media, I found a product mix that was worth a try:

1/2 cup baking soda;

1/2 cup borax;

Laundry detergent

Directions: Place all into the drum

The result…bright white sweats again! Oh, thank goodness! Tyson, I love you and forgive you, the situation is under control, but please - no more shortcuts!

Although my innovation worked, it took WAY longer to fix the situation than it would have been to do it right the first time.

As I look at our integration of Lumen EMEA, I know that in many situations we could take a shortcut. We could leave teams, networks, systems and offices separated and it would be A-LOT easier. This is pretty much what our industry has done over the past 20 years. Companies often figure it’s too hard and too expensive to integrate things right the first time and so they don’t. Just like my laundry, taking these shortcuts costs more time and money in the long term. The technology debt is enormous. The power, space and inefficiency create an almost unfixable situation down the road.? On which a business case will never prove in.

Here at Colt, we have taken the right path, albeit the hard one. Like my husband, we know the process, the procedure, the product, the tools and the systems. We know what goes together and what doesn’t and we’ll take the time to do it right. We know this will make us better and stronger in the future.

Shortcuts rarely pay off, they usually create a harder and longer path. So whether it’s taking the time to separate your darks and whites in your laundry, or taking the time to integrate our data and systems so we can build a sustainable network and business, we know how to do it the right way and we’ll lead the industry in our approach to ensure we enable a sustainable business for our people, our portfolio and the planet.