About Don Cook
I help IT teams get time back by reducing manual work, simplifying messy workflows, and building practical automation they can actually maintain.
Hands-on IT operations experience, grounded in real environments
I am Don Cook, an IT operations professional focused on reducing friction, improving reliability, and helping teams stop being buried in repeat work. I have worked inside the kind of environments I help fix: support queues, Microsoft 365, identity, Jira, Teams, documentation, scripting, and day-to-day operational cleanup.
OutsideTheBoxIT is not here to replace your IT team. It is here to help them operate better.
How I work
Most IT problems are not caused by bad tools. They are caused by manual work, unclear ownership, overcomplicated processes, and systems nobody has time to step back and improve.
1. Understand
Learn how the work actually gets done and where the friction lives.
2. Simplify
Remove unnecessary complexity before adding automation.
3. Automate
Automate repeat work in a way your team can maintain.
4. Document
Leave clear notes, ownership, and next steps after handoff.
Let us talk through where your team is losing time
If you want a grounded outside perspective or help reducing operational friction, send a message and I will reply with a simple next step.