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:
- Identify where you are stretched too thin across roles and responsibilities.
- Identify where you can consolidate responsibilities under one person to streamline processes.
- Develop onboarding materials so that your vendors have all of the necessary information to get started.
- Create a system for accountability to keep freelancers and fractional employees on track.
- 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.
