In Part 2 of this series, we discussed the importance of picking the appropriate outsourcing provider for your tasks. Once you have found that perfect provider, it is very important that you commit to making that relationship work.
Too often I speak with small business owners who view outsourcing as an experiment. Their first question is “is there a contract or commitment?” I say there isn’t and they say, “Okay, I’ll test you guys out and see how it goes.” With that attitude, it’s not going to work. There is no magic to outsourcing and delegating, it’s very much the same thing as hiring someone to work at your business. There is an amount of work and effort involved on your part. You wouldn’t hire someone to do a job unless you were fully committed to training them and helping them do the work and that is the same level of commitment you should bring with you to an outsourcing relationship because…
It’s going to be work. It’s not easy outsourcing and delegating. But, if you fully appreciate the benefits of outsourcing you’ll have the motivation to put in the required effort.
- You are giving up control. For a small business owner, that’s a hard thing to do. You are going to have to fight back the urge to take your pet projects back under your wing, scrutinize and overemphasize details and deciding it’s not perfect because it is not exactly the way you would do it.
- You are going to have to give feedback and be patient. Again, no magic. You are dealing with a human being and it is unlikely they will do a perfect job right off the bat. Their job is to keep you happy. If they didn’t do something right, it’s probably not for lack of effort or intelligence, it’s probably due to a misunderstanding. You should expect that you will have to shape the results of your provider over time through feedback and tweaking processes, not anything less than perfection is failure.
In the beginning I strongly recommend at least weekly check-ins to discuss how things are going, brainstorm ideas, get questions answered, and provide feedback. Depending on the complexity of your projects, you may want to do daily meetings. When giving feedback, it is important to be specific and make sure that changes are made to the process in order to prevent those mistakes from happening in the future.
Point is, you’ve got to commit to putting effort in at the beginning to make things work. And, over the long-term, yep, you guessed it, you have to keep putting in effort to keep the relationship healthy.
I’ve seen clients do a great job of getting things set up in the beginning and then disappear for 8-12 months. We can’t reach them with questions, we don’t hear a peep from them. They come back and realize what we have been doing isn’t correct anymore because of changes in their business we were unaware of.
Keep your provider focused on the actual result you are looking for rather than just going through the process and getting it done. For instance, if you have delegated a process of going through Craigslist and finding leads that match a certain criteria the actual result you are looking for is “Find my business great leads.” Unless you emphasize that is the goal, it is easy for a provider to slip into a mindset that their job is to follow directions and check that process off their list. You will get far better results by keeping them focused on results rather than processes.
After the initial set up and feedback period, you should schedule at least monthly check-ins. These are a good opportunity to meet with your provider and brainstorm, “How can we make this process better?” It is this analysis that ensures that you get more bang for your buck over time and your provider stays engaged (because they know that meeting is coming up and you will expect them to have ideas).
In summary, be committed, give feedback, and be patient and you’ll be a small business owner the reaps the benefits of outsourcing.
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September 24, 2011
Yes i completely agreed to your point of view. Outsourcing work really made things easy but there should be commitment between the client and the employer to whom the work has been outsourced. The client should keep a track record of everything about the project and yes communication should not became a barrier.