As the famous American educator and motivational speaker John Bradshaw once said “I define a ‘good person’ as somebody who is fully conscious of their own limitations. They know their strengths, but they also know their ‘shadow’ – they know their weaknesses.” This idea of understanding your strengths and weaknesses is not only applicable to every individual but also to every business.
All business aim to add value in one way or another whether it is through marketing, finance, PR or by some other means this is their value proposition. But a company which strives to cover every area, either for their clients or for themselves, open themselves up to vulnerability due to their inexperience within the areas they are trying to cover. While a larger company might have the finances to bring all their resources in-house, this is rarely the case and big businesses will often turn to outside companies who are experts in their field.
For example, Coca-Cola is undoubtedly one of the largest globally recognized companies with a huge amount of resources at their disposal. However, even with all this financial strength, they understand that it is important to leave certain jobs, such as advertising, to the experts to let them do what they do best. Smaller startups don’t always have the luxury of outsourcing roles in their early stages, so many take a DIT approach for jobs such as website design, sales or advertising. But it clearly has its advantages to bring an expert in as soon as a business can afford it.
As I Am Wire states, a business should recognize their strength and stick with it. An employee frequently shifting roles between a manager, marketer, bookkeeper, web developer, and HR is likely to cause trouble in the long run with nothing extraordinary being done at any front. In light of this, stick to your strength and acquire talented resources for other significant tasks.
We spoke with Alejandro Vasquez, VP of Business Development at PSL, a company that provides software outsourcing teams that deliver agile development services, who said “After a tech startup has successfully demonstrated a concept with a “quick-and-dirty” MVP, it comes the time to build a scalable product. To deliver on its promise, it is recommended that the startup partner with an outsourced expert in software engineering. Building software is not trivial, nor is locating and retaining good talent. A solid outsourcing partner can help with both, and if selected offshore, can also do so at a more competitive cost.”
So the next time a job comes up that doesn’t match the skill set of any employees in your company, perhaps take a look at outside resources that are available to help.
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