“Will our core become stronger or weaker through outsourcing?”

Systemic leader Barbara Hoogenboom:

“With outsourcing there is a considerable systemic catch. The reasons for outsourcing can be diverse: it is often cheaper to have certain activities carried out by others. For example, many IT activities have been outsourced by various companies to IT professionals on the other side of the world, who can buy labor much cheaper there, or let us make clothes in countries where labor wages are lower than in our own country.

Another reason may be that you do not have (sufficient) expertise on a certain subject and it is not worthwhile to hire a separate employee for this. This happens a lot, for example, in the field of (content) marketing and SEO activities.

It is important to ask yourself what happens to your core through outsourcing. The closer it gets to your business core, the more dangerous the systemic viper could be.

We have also called in help for our communication activities for some time now for the Bert Hellinger Institute Netherlands and the Systemic Business School. The practical aspects of this can easily be outsourced, but that is not really possible with regard to the content, the texts and systemic messages. They really have to go through our own hands and hearts. Because otherwise we not only hand over our communication, but also the heart of our company.

You can see something similar happening at the large banking companies, which have outsourced a lot of IT to people in India, among others. As long as IT is still a ‘by-product’ in your organization, that’s fine. But as you notice that as a bank, due to all the technological developments in the world, you are becoming more and more an IT company than a company of bankers, you may suddenly have to conclude that your heart has ended up in India.

So a good question to ask yourself when (re)considering outsourcing is: “Will outsourcing make our core stronger or weaker?”

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