One of the keys to success in any part of your life has to do with learning from your mistakes. The reality is we all make mistakes and most of us make plenty of them. But I believe the most important lesson is what you do with the mistakes you have made. Do you learn from them? Do you grow from them? Do you make changes to ensure they don’t happen again? Or do you leave them as mistakes in your past?

I want to admit to you the three biggest mistakes I have made with outsourcing.

 

Hiring the “Jack of all trades”

This is the first lesson that I learnt about outsourcing. The first time I began the process of hiring a full-time employee, as opposed to a contractor, I tried to find somebody who had all the skills that I required in my business. I wanted somebody who knew how to design websites, build websites, manage them in an ongoing capacity as well as various administration tasks.

If you know the old saying “A jack of all trades”, you would be aware that the second part states “they are a master of none”. The expectation I set in this one person was they needed to be an exceptional in every skill they possess. Of course, when you are a jack of all trades, you are a master of none.

This has also been a principle that I have tried to share with many colleagues and people I have consulted with about outsourcing. They have tried and failed to find a person who can meet all the needs that their business requires.

The solution I needed was found when I began employing specialists in a single chosen field. I now employ the best graphic designers and website programmers, and therefore the productivity and quality that my team outputs far exceeds what they would have if I had continued to employ people who were jack of all trades.

 

Not having adequate cash flow in my business

When I was an individual employee, I could manage the cash flow well. If there were weeks where the majority of my tasks and working efforts did not produce income, I knew that was fine because it meant the next week generally twice as much work would be completed and therefore double the income.

This was fine when I was working as an individual, but taking this business practice into a team environment with staff put a lot of stress on myself at first if I was not able to meet commitments with team members.

It is important to have the cash flow, or the buffer, to be able to meet the payment requirements of your staff regardless of the income that your business brings. Not paying staff is one of the worst things that you can do as a manager. This was the biggest lesson that I learnt and I had to make changes in my business  to ensure that it doesn’t happen. In my defense, every cent got paid to my staff members, but there were times when I wasn’t able to deliver their weekly payments on the Friday as I had promised.

 

Not making a good connection with my team

Those people that I spend time getting to know, connecting with on social networks and chatting with about life and not just work, are the people that end up becoming my long-term employees.

If a team members starts with me and I don’t spend time making that connection and just leave it to be all about work, I find that if the ‘going gets tough’ or stressful at any time, these are the people that I loose first in my team.

I now believe it is critically important, no matter what level of employee, that I spend time making a connection with them and getting to know them. I now consider many of my team (both past and present ) as friends and keeping regular contact with them outside of work.