Delegating is hard. Getting someone else to do something instead of doing it yourself… there are a whole bunch of psychological, practical, economic and other issues to navigate when doing that sort of thing. There is definitely a point where you have to either accept that your company will never grow, or start delegating. I’m definitely there right now. If I wasn’t a workaholic, I’d have reached it 2 years ago.<\/p>\n
So right now I’m in the situation where when I see something that I can possibly delegate, I jump at it. I guess when I say delegate, I mean outsource. Ideally, I’d have full time employees, but I don’t need an artist, or a web developer, or game designer or ad-manager or PR person. I need a little bit of all of them. Thats hard to find. As a result I end up employing a ton of people on short term piece-work contracts. Right now 3 people are working for me, a designer, a web developer and an artist. Oh and a trailer-producer, so that’s 4. The trouble is, it *always* involves some admin and management (I insist on a countersigned contract even if its $100 of work), and also it’s never 100% like you doing it yourself.<\/p>\n
But I did recently come to a bit of a revelation. The fact that I could get the results I wanted quicker with me doing it, is irrelevant. It becomes a question of RELATIVE efficiency and not absolute. This is a bit of a mental trick, and it’s probably the one thing I recall from my economics degree, but check this out: (from wikipedia<\/a>)<\/p>\n Comparative advantage<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n In economics<\/a>, comparative advantage<\/b> refers to the ability of a party to produce a particular good or service at a lower marginal<\/a> and opportunity cost<\/a> over another. Even if one country is more efficient in the production of all goods (absolute advantage<\/a> in all goods) than the other, both countries will still gain by trading with each other, as long as they have different relative efficiencies.<\/em><\/p>\n On the surface it sounds like nonsense. If I can make bananas cheaper than you, and tractors cheaper than you too, why on earth would I trade bananas and tractors with you? Read the article if it isn’t obvious, it’s kinda magical.<\/p>\n There is a difference between reading that and really internalizing it. What it comes down to is this: If you can’t find an artist as efficient as you, or can’t find a designer as quick as you… it really doesn’t matter. It probably STILL makes sense for you to outsource. You aren’t paying someone to do a job more efficiently than you (of course that would be awesome) you are paying someone to do a job *so you can do something else*. Clearly, the solution is to make the *something else* the stuff that can never be outsourced.<\/p>\n I bet I’m explaining it badly, but I know what I mean! It’s a revelation to me. I suspect it also acts as a barrier to expansion for some small companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Delegating is hard. Getting someone else to do something instead of doing it yourself… there are a whole bunch of psychological, practical, economic and other issues to navigate when doing that sort of thing. There is definitely a point where you have to either accept that your company will never grow, or start delegating. I’m<\/p>\n