It’s amazing how often we patch things instead of fixing them, even when the fix is available. In fact, often the difference between “patching” and “fixing” is just… removing the old patch.
Imagine you got wounded, and lacking proper medical supplies you did the best you could with a bandana. Now you’re at the hospital with proper medical supplies, and the staff goes to put on some nice, proper bandages… over your makeshift one.
People buy new clothes, but stuff them in the closet with the same worn-out, ill-fitting garments the new clothes were meant to replace in the first place. They adopt a new tech solution for a problem, but don’t delete the hacked-together system they had before, never fully migrating the data over.
It’s realizing your milk has gone bad, so you go out and buy new milk, only to shove it into the fridge in front of the old jug instead of throwing it away.
These people don’t lack for solutions. But they patch. And an old patch is a lousy foundation for a new solution. When you’re truly fixing something, fix it – gut the bad solutions out first.
The Opportunity Machine 