This is a Word Carnival post, hosted by Tea Silvestre, the Word Chef.
Have you heard of the Peter Principle? I first heard of it not long after Laurence J Peter and Raymond Hull posited the theory in their book of the same name, in 1969.
Our car had broken down in the middle of a road trip in South Africa.
We were not far from a small town, where we found a run down garage on it’s outer edges. Among the usual detritus of a garage; several tatty posters advertising cigarettes mixed up with bare-all calendars hanging askew from every wall, oil stained piles of paperwork cluttering the small woebegone desk and dusty, greasy piles of old rag around which we had to step, we found a very grumpy mechanic, who apparently owned the business.
He may well have been a first rate mechanic, but he was useless at dealing with people. My travelling friend, a well-studied university student explained that this was a classic case of the Peter Principle. Here was a man, who had he worked for someone else would have been brilliant at what he did, fixing cars. But as he owned the business, he was forced to work outside of his competencies to include client servicing, paperwork and organizational skills, and frankly he sucked at it.
The authors’ primary contention was that within organizations people would eventually be promoted to levels beyond their competence.
It was written some decades before the Internet made possible a world in which individuals could work from home or a small office, creating the entrepreneurial revolution of today, but its principle holds good nonetheless.
Work in flow
Some decades later, I was introduced to another theory described as being in flow. This theory is attributed to Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his research to find out, ‘how to live your life as a work of art, rather than as a chaotic response to external events”, and is as a result of 250,000 surveys done in a number of countries.
From a business perspective, it means to occupy a space where your challenges can be well met by your competency, you’re neither bored nor anxious and you’re completely enrolled in what you’re doing as the opposite state to apathy.
Our mechanic had a ‘chaotic response’ to his working environment as a result of ‘external events’, namely his customers! The moment he was required to deal with a human, negotiate a deal, communicate the solution and attend to the paperwork he very quickly ceased to be ‘in flow’. Indeed, these activities rendered him almost incoherent and utterly incapable. As he put his head under the bonnet of the car and contemplated ‘his art’, he was enrolled and blissfully happy.
Decades later many of us are not always in flow either and are often forced to work outside of our levels of competency or doing work which we’re apathetic to.
Whatever burning passion caused us to hang out our shingle and declare ourselves open for business, it didn’t necessarily ensure we would be great marketers, human resource managers, accurate book-keepers, financially adept, website builders or great copy writers.
Had the grumpy mechanic plied his trade today, he would have benefitted from outsourcing, as opposed to employing or contracting. Well, yes, that’s a moot point. Outsourcing is essentially contracted employment, but I would contend that it introduces a different mindset.
Previously, to resolve your competency (and overload) issues, you either engaged a staff member or found professional services to do the full suite of service for you with a price tag to match.
Moving into the employment space carries for the employer a reasonable risk of falling prey to the Peter Principle too. Entrepreneurs are not necessarily great managers, in fact they’re frequently poor at delegating.
Employing v outsourcing
Outsourcing on the other hand is one professional contracting another to do a slice of work. The metier is different. There is no obligation outside of the contract. The cost is known and understood and can be budgeted. If it doesn’t work with one outsourcer, you can try another. Eventually, you’ll click with a range of people who you can contract when necessary and not in-between, without any guilt attached.
Outsourcing is simply the most extraordinary manifestation of the Internet and how it works to keep us in flow and working within our competency.
Here are my 5 tips for introducing effective outsourcing over a three month period.
Month One. Open an excel spread sheet and list every activity you are engaged in, broadly: For example, emailing clients, calling clients, meeting clients, writing blogs, emailing database, building websites, paperwork etc. Then, on a daily basis allocate your time to each activity. At the end of the month, analyse this data. How much time to each activity? Could each activity be broken down into stuff you HAD to do, and stuff you could give to someone else to do.
Month Two. Keep the same excel sheet, but this time as you do the activities you think you could outsource, keep a dot point note of the process. What are you actually doing to make it happen? So for example, to email a database, you write the email, find the passwords to access the account, upload new data, upload the email to the software, include links, test it, send it. How many times do you do this and how long does it take you? Do the same for every activity you do that you would at least like to outsource if you could.
Month Three. You now have the beginnings of some fairly detailed briefs. Select one. Write the brief out fully. Explain the purpose of this job. Make sure you’re precise and detailed. Each task should clearly lead to the next.
Then open an account on one of the outsourcing platforms. By choice I use Odesk, I find it user friendly. Post the job.
Use as many filters as you can. You will be inundated with applications if you’re vague. Stipulate exactly the attributes you’d like applicants to present. For example: high attention to detail, familiarity with MailChimp, able to create and install forms on WordPress sites, able to create templates using supplied logos, capable sub editor, capable copy writer, proven record etc.
Filter the applicants in four scans. First scan, did they answer your attributes? If they tell you they’re great at photoshop for example, then move on. Second scan, assess the quality of response. Third scan, check the testimonials and working record. Fourth scan, select the top three.
Contact the outsourcers and give each a trial job. PLEASE PAY. It’s morally reprehensible to expect people to work for no pay. And on that note, you should not use cost per hour as a filter. You get what you pay for. Period.
Perhaps all three will work out incredibly well and you’ll have three people with whom you can work, each with slightly different attributes. You would be unlucky not to find at least one person with whom you can trial outsourcing, using this method.
Now you have done it once, systematically work through your list of activities and do the same for every one you think you can outsource. Organically, you will weed out of your life the dross and the stuff you just don’t want to do. You’ll find yourself a team of reliable, decent folk who are happy to help you when you ask.
You’ll be on your way to turning your working life into a work of art rather than as a chaotic response to a set of external events.
MY B1G1 Pledge: For every one who comments, likes, shares, pluses and tweets 50 impoverished children will get a nutritious sandwich in South Africa and 500 children will get clean fresh water.
Outsource. Work ‘in flow’ and eschew the Peter Principle! is a post from: Why You Must Blog