leadership dot #1821: maintenance

Today's dot is written by Austin J. Good from Hilbert College's Leadership Applications class:

The act of maintaining something is defined as keeping something in an existing state, or preserving something from failure or decline. People maintain various things in their lives: their cars, homes and relationships, and some things are maintained by a service or company for the benefit of people. People maintain things because they frequently rely on them to accomplish tasks or receive support in their day-to-day lives. Without this regular maintenance, certain aspects of a person’s life may suffer or lead to decreased productivity and frustration.

I have been experiencing a serious lack of maintenance on certain websites recently and it has made being productive much more difficult. On certain websites, material fails to post when the deadline is quickly approaching; this leads to me scrambling to see if there is an issue on my end or on the website itself. I attempted to reach out to someone who may be able to help, but received no response prior to the deadline or after. Another website is restricting me from going beyond the log in screen and, more times than not, I cannot access material.

These websites should be aware that people require their service, and often pay for it, and need the sites to be working efficiently and correctly 24/7. Failure to do so leaves customers upset and wanting to find a different and more reliable option.

Maintaining a service, or anything else in life for that matter, is imperative to success. This is not only true for the people dependent on the service, but also the people providing it. If the service is well maintained, reliable and efficient, people will want to use it and may insist that other people check it out as well.

A leader must also maintain their organization to ensure success. Leaders must make sure all the parts are running smoothly and completing the task they should be. If this is done, success will not be far behind. What have you done to maintain your organization lately?