Outsource, Or Die

 

Okay, maybe “die” is a bit strong. But consider: prior to the Ming Dynasty ((1368-1644), China was a technologically advanced and expanding world power. However, once Hong Wu founded the Ming Dynasty, China became a (relatively) closed society. Both trade and diplomatic ties were abruptly curtailed or halted altogether, and the Great Wall was completed in the North, symbolically (if not actually) sealing off China along hundreds of miles. By the time the Qing Dynasty began (1644), the West had attained marked superiority in military, economic, and agricultural technology. Ironically, anti-foreigner sentiments would linger for decades – the Boxer Rebellion (1900), for example, saw hundreds of foreigners killed[i].

Similarly, under the Tokugawa Shogunate, Japan entered into a 220-year long period of isolation, changed only when Commodore Perry returned to Japan in 1854. Prior to this period of isolation (“Sakoku”[ii]), Japan was relatively advanced in its economics and military technology. But by 1854, with trains commonplace in the West, a gift locomotive from Perry created astonishment among the Japanese people who saw it for the first time.

There are many other examples, but these two illustrate dramatically the dangers of organizations – not just nation-states – that attempt to create a narrative or environment where outside or alien ideas or concepts are dissuaded or prevented from being adapted. I believe this effect is scalable. Not only can isolationism dramatically affect entire societies (usually for the worse), the same effect can occur on an individual basis. As I have discussed in this blog previously, arrogance is not just off-putting on an interpersonal level – it prevents the person so afflicted from readily evaluating or adapting ideas brought to them by others. The more humble, then, are in a far better position to take advantage of new, novel solutions to problems that the arrogant one won’t even recognize.

In-between nation-states and individuals, we have corporations and project teams. How amenable are these to recognizing and adopting new ideas, versus holding tightly to a narrative that they have all the answers going in, and are therefore insulated to the outside realm of ideas? And what are some of the indicators that the specific corporation or project team is leaning towards one side of this scale, or the other?

Indicator number one is easy: it’s ProjectManagement.com’s July theme of outsourcing. Project teams especially are composed of people from several (if not many) different disciplines. The larger project teams will almost always include some subcontractors, and it is not at all unusual for very large project teams to include personal combined from companies that would otherwise be rivals. Beware, therefore, the large project team composed entirely of people from one organization. Such teams are almost certainly allowing business model pathologies to change the optimal approach to completing the project’s scope on-time, on-budget. A sub-level clue of this effect occurs when there is a notable, yet artificial, hierarchy among the members of the project team based on their membership in the various organizations within said team.

Indicator number two is a bit more difficult to ascertain, but is a dead giveaway nevertheless. It’s cronyism/nepotism. These two very similar business model pathologies are clear indicators that the organization that is indulging them has walked away from (if not abandoned altogether) a merit-based structure for evaluating and placing talented personnel in their most appropriate roles on the project team. In a way, cronyism is the anti-outsourcing alternative. Instead of giving work to those outside the home organization because the recipients can do the job better, faster, or cheaper, the organization instead gives the work to the recipient simply because they are internally favored, with little or no true consideration of performance.

Finally, if you, yourself, are not an M.D., and you don’t outsource your own medical care, you will, in all probability, die sooner than you would otherwise. So this blog’s title isn’t really all that outlandish after all.

[i] Retrieved from History of China, http://www.chaos.umd.edu/history/toc.html, on July 23, 2016.

[ii] Sakoku. (2016, July 5). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:06, July 23, 2016, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sakoku&oldid=728508502