In Part 1 of this three-part series of articles, we answered the question, “What is strategic planning?” As Brian Tracy outlines is his book, The Way to Wealth Workbook, Part III: Blueprints for Success. In the first article in the series, we talked about the question, “What could we simplify?” This article tackles the next two questions in the series.
Ask, “What could we outsource?”
The term “outsourcing” might make you think of overseas call centers but that's actually an example of bad outsourcing, because it's noticeable to the customer in a negative way. Good outsourcing, on the other hand, shouldn't be noticeable at all to anyone outside your team.
Your company is full of activities you could outsource right now. Who processes your payroll? Who cleans your office, and troubleshoots your computers, and fixes your printers when they break down? If people on your core team are handling these tasks, it's probably time to outsource.
Check in with some local companies that provide these services or go online and hire some freelancers. You will likely find people who will gladly work for a fraction of what you're paying your core employees to handle those same tasks and your core employees will free up time to spend on actively building the company.
As we mentioned in Part 1 of this series, try bringing someone you trust into your office, like a professional business coach. Show that person each repetitive daily task your employees handle, and asking if they would pay an expert to do that task. If the answer is no then outsource it. Someone else can do it more cost effectively, more quickly, and at a higher level of quality than your core employees can; hire that person and assign it to them. They will be glad to have the work.
Ask, “What could we eliminate?”
Some activities don't need to be re-engineered or shuffled around; they need to be cut out altogether. As in the previous sections, it's not always easy to see which activities you should eliminate but your company definitely has a few of them.
As Brian Tracy says in this article, “Because of unclear job assignments, lack of priorities, poor management and direction, and lack of feedback, the average employee wastes 50 percent of time or more in activities that have nothing to do with the job.” In short, some of your business's activities are costing you money. It's time to get rid of them.
Micromanagement, however, is not the answer. That will only stress out your employees and reduce performance even further. No, the answer is more surprising, treat your team with as much respect as possible. Trust them to do their jobs, and hold them to the same high standards to which you hold yourself. When they notice something wasteful, encourage them to tell you.
Brian Tracy's book The Way to Wealth Workbook, Part III: Blueprints for Success contains an Business Strategic Planning Questionnaire, in which Brian explains how to “analyze every step of your business activities.” The first two articles in this series have covered three ways in which you should approach this analysis and in Part 3, we will tackle the final question.
