IT Myths: We’ll fix it next year

19 December 2025

The myth

When something in IT isn’t quite right, it can wait. Budgets are tight, teams are stretched, and the system is still working. The sensible option feels like parking the issue and coming back to it later.

“We’ll fix it next year. After the holidays.” sounds pragmatic. It sounds responsible. It sounds like a plan.

The reality

Next year isn’t a plan. It’s a delay.

Most IT problems don’t stay static. They degrade slowly. Performance slips. Manual work increases. Knowledge concentrates in a few heads. Small compromises stack up until they become structural.

The longer something is left, the harder it becomes to fix cleanly.

Where SMBs get caught out

Temporary fixes become permanent. Workarounds stop being short-term and quietly turn into “how things work”.
Risk becomes normalised. Nothing bad has happened yet, so the warning signs get ignored.
Costs rise invisibly. Each delay reduces options and increases dependency, effort, and disruption later.
No one owns the decision. The issue sits in limbo, unreviewed and undocumented.

The risk

Doing nothing is still a decision. It just happens without ownership.

When something eventually fails, the story becomes “we didn’t realise it was that bad”. In most cases, the signals were there. They were just inconvenient, or uncomfortable to act on.

By the time action is forced, the original choice point is long gone.

What actually works

Acknowledge what’s being deferred. If something matters enough to delay, it matters enough to document and review.

Name an owner. Someone should be accountable for understanding the risk and deciding when it gets addressed.

Be honest about consequences. If the issue grows, what breaks first? Cost, resilience, security, or people?

Set a real trigger. Not “sometime next year”, but a condition that forces a revisit.

Accept that delay has a price. If you’re choosing to pay it, do so knowingly.

Bottom line

Not everything needs fixing immediately. But everything worth deferring deserves a decision.

“We’ll fix it next year” only works if next year arrives with clarity, ownership, and intent. Otherwise, it’s just how manageable IT issues quietly become problems.