One Action That Can Free Your Firm From a Plateau

Are you the kind of executive that wants to “do it all”?

Me too.

As CEO of Back Office Betties, I have to keep a lot of balls in the air. In truth, one person can only do so many things effectively. So, when you spread yourself too thin as a leader, your team and your business growth will suffer. You don’t want that.

That’s why I’m sharing how I navigated Back of Betties past a plateau, and the hard lessons I learned along the way.

 

Every good leader should do this when their growth stalls

Let’s talk about plateaus for a minute.

Every business has them. It could be that you’re not bringing in enough clients or the clients you have aren’t returning enough revenue. Whatever it is, we’ve all had a time where we’ve felt stuck as a business and unsure how to move forward.

It took a hard look at myself as a leader and the business as it was versus where I wanted to be to realize I needed to make some changes. I needed to learn how to outsource work efficiently and effectively.

I’ll be honest, I had the same concerns as a lot of leaders about investing in outsourcing, such as:

• Would the ROI be worth the spend?
• Will the work get done well?
• Can I trust outside help with my business?
• Will this create more work for me instead of less?

These are valid concerns, but I also knew that something had to give if we were going to break through a plateau. Here’s the approach I took to affordably grow our team and gain access to expertise outside of my own through outsourcing.

 

5 Essential steps to take before outsourcing tasks

Every firm is different, but I hope that my experience can help other executives strengthen their organization and structure. At Back Office Betties, we used an approach based on EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System® to improve how we outsource.

First, I created an accountability chart that imagined a box for every role at the company and listed out the core responsibilities. I quickly realized a few key things that changed the way I look at my business and how I wanted to move forward.

Here’s what I noticed right away:

• I was sitting in several of the boxes and holding a lot of responsibilities.
• I had more than one person filling multiple boxes, making things sloppy.
• I had vendors/outsourced help filling some of the roles, but I didn’t have a process for holding them accountable.
• I needed a plan to make sure that I was leading effectively and filling any gaps.

Based on what I learned, this is the advice I would give any firm executive who is starting to scale their services by outsourcing work with vendors, freelancers, and fractional employees:

1. Identify where you are stretched too thin across roles and responsibilities.
2. Identify where you can consolidate responsibilities under one person to streamline processes.
3. Develop onboarding materials so that your vendors have all of the necessary information to get started.
4. Create a system for accountability to keep freelancers and fractional employees on track.
5. Set up regular check-in meetings with outsourced workers to stay on top of changes, blockers, and tasks.

 

Break through your growth ceiling

Don’t let your responsibilities control you—control them instead. We all hit a wall sometimes, but your company’s growth doesn’t have to suffer! Free yourself from a plateau by learning how to outsource work to affordably grow your team and gain access to outside expertise.