3 risks of out-tasking & what to do
I read an interesting article recently in the latest issue of Howard Tiano’s newsletter Outsource Outtakes about out-tasking vs. outsourcing.
He made an excellent point. When you are outsourcing, you need to consider whether you are outsourcing a one-time project, which he calls out-tasking, or doing true outsourcing, which implies recurring work or a longer-term project.
One of the reasons to think about it that way is that you’ll get a better sense of where you need to focus your attention as you look for a freelancer, define the project and then manage the work.
If you are out-tasking, more likely than not, the reason you are sending the work out is that you do not have the skills in-house to do it. (It might also be that your people don’t have time to do it - we’ll talk about that next.)
When you don’t have those skills in-house, projects are more likely to go wrong for 3 reasons:
1. You haven’t thought through exactly what you want, so the direction you give might be vaguer than it should be and they might head off down the wrong path.
2. You don’t understand the process they are going to use to do the work, so you might not give them all the information they need and you might have unrealistic expectations regarding budget or results.
3. You don’t know how to manage them properly. You don’t know what problems are likely to occur or what questions to ask that will let you know that the project is headed for trouble.
Think about it…
When you are managing something you understand deeply, you usually give pretty good direction to someone working for you. You can articulate clearly what you want and what you don’t; you know what to expect in terms of the process, budget and results; you can spot problems as soon as they crop up - and you know what to do about them.
So how do you manage something you don’t understand all that well?
The easiest way is to invest a little of your time up front in educating yourself.
Spend a little bit of time thinking through what you want. Poke around on the web a little to find examples of this type of work that you like.
Buy an hour or two from a couple different freelancers or consultants to talk about the project and brainstorm.
Your project will go SO much more smoothly.
You might think you don’t have time to do this, but -trust me - you will be spending so much more time correcting problems if things go wrong. The extra time and money is well worth it - you’ll clarify what you want and may even find a slightly different direction that will work even better than what you had in mind.
In the next post… If saving time is your big issue…
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