Most people don’t choose SharePoint as a career. They end up there… and then never quite leave.
My SharePoint journey started back in 2003 during what was meant to be a short, very unremarkable three-month maternity leave cover role as an executive assistant. I was there to keep a seat warm, answer phones, and stay out of trouble. Instead, I discovered SharePoint.
Not in a “this is amazing” way — more in a “this could be dangerous in the wrong hands” way.
I started tinkering, then building, then asking why things were done the way they were. Before anyone really noticed, I’d built and launched an intranet for a global company and accidentally created a career for myself. That three months turned into 13 years with the same organisation, countless migrations, and a steady evolution from “the SharePoint person” to consultant.
Fast forward 25 years, and I’m still here — fixing broken environments, untangling permissions, designing information architecture, and explaining (again) why folders alone are not a strategy. It hasn’t always been pretty, but it has been endlessly interesting. Somehow, after all this time, I still enjoy getting my hands dirty and making SharePoint actually work the way people need it to.
The Horror Stories We All Share
If you’ve worked with SharePoint for any length of time, you don’t need me to explain the pain. You’ve lived it.
The inherited environment no one wants to own. The migration where everything was “lifted and shifted” and quietly made worse. The permissions model that looks like it was designed by a committee of ghosts.
And then there were subsites.
At the time, they felt like a good idea — logical, neat, sensible. In reality, they became a sprawling underground city of broken inheritance, mystery navigation, and content no one dared touch. We’ve moved on to hubs now, which is progress, but it hasn’t stopped the real problem: uncontrolled growth with no agreed structure.
Which brings us to governance — or more accurately, the absence of it. In many organisations, governance still exists as a PDF created during a project, signed off, uploaded to SharePoint, and never referenced again. Meanwhile, sites multiply, folders deepen, metadata drifts, and permissions quietly unravel.
And yes, the folder debate still rages on. People cling to folders because they’re familiar and feel safe. Metadata scares people, not because it’s difficult, but because it requires decisions. In my experience, the best environments almost always use a hybrid approach — but getting there means changing habits, and that’s where resistance usually shows up.
Over the years, I’ve had plenty of standoffs with people who don’t want to change how they work. My approach is always the same: show them one thing that saves time. One view. One filter. One less click. That’s usually all it takes.
From Mess to Method: Why SharePoint Still Matters
Despite all of this — or perhaps because of it — I’m more excited about SharePoint now than I’ve ever been.
Modern SharePoint is not the SharePoint of 2003, 2010, or even 2016. The platform has matured significantly, and the new document library experience is genuinely good. Views are finally front and centre, where they always should have been. More importantly, Microsoft has made its position very clear: SharePoint is the backbone of Microsoft 365 and the foundation for Copilot.
This is where the conversation shifts.
Copilot doesn’t fix a messy environment — it accelerates it. If your permissions are loose, Copilot will surface sensitive content. If your metadata is inconsistent, Copilot will give inconsistent answers. If your structure is unclear, Copilot will confidently return the wrong thing.
There is no AI without Information Architecture.
AI doesn’t need more content. It needs better structure. Governance stops being a theoretical exercise and becomes a design discipline. When ownership, structure, and lifecycle are built into the environment from the start, everything else becomes easier — search, security, automation, and AI included.
Why I Built Fix the Mess™
After more than two decades in the trenches, I realised something uncomfortable: most SharePoint problems are predictable. And yet, we keep fixing them reactively, one symptom at a time.
So I stopped patching and built a methodology instead.
Fix the Mess™ is the result of years of real-world clean-ups. It’s not best-practice theory or vendor slides; it’s a repeatable way to assess environments, design intentional containers, apply structure that holds up over time, and prepare SharePoint properly for Copilot.
It’s not about perfection. It’s about defensible decisions.
Tools That Match the Reality of Real Work
That thinking now lives at fixthemess.ai.
You can start with the free Copilot Readiness Checklist to understand where your real risks are. The Fix the Mess™ Starter Toolkit helps you assess and plan properly. The Information Architecture for SharePoint course goes deeper into design thinking, and the Fix the Mess™ Masterclass walks you through the full methodology as you apply it to your own environment.
And then there’s Fix the Mess™ Studio.
Studio is the tool I wish I’d had for most of my career. It lets you visually design SharePoint structures, make decisions upfront, and plan environments properly before anything is built — or rebuild what already exists. It finally bridges the gap between thinking and doing.
Still Here, Still Fixing
After 25 years, SharePoint has challenged me, frustrated me, and shaped my career in ways I never planned. I don’t believe SharePoint is broken. I believe it’s been misunderstood.
If you’ve inherited a mess, are staring down Copilot, or just want your environment to make sense again, you’re not alone. And yes — it can be fixed.
Let’s fix the mess. Properly.
