I have a confession to make.
I’m not great at cooking steaks on a BBQ.
I’d love to be. I really enjoy having friends over and sharing a good social afternoon. I’m just not that skilled at this bit.
I need to get people who are better at this to help me each time. I buy the steaks; good ones so they aren’t cheap! I buy a gas bottle refill and BBQ cleaning stuff. It’s a bit of an investment. If one of my mates cooks the steaks I can make sure we have plates, cutlery, cold drinks, salads. You know, all the other stuff that I can’t do while I’m burning the steaks! I gain that opportunity by asking for help!
It would be a real waste of all that time, money and effort for me to not get the nice steak meal I had planned on and promised others I would produce for them….
For those already with the lump in your throat or chill down your spine you can see what I’m about to say next….
Why do so many of you not learn this simple lesson when it comes to business projects? You’d rather burn the steaks than bring in someone who has BBQ expertise to produce the outcome you committed to.
When you ask for help you are investing in achieving the outcome you’ve committed to. The cost of that help is almost always far less than the cost of the steaks, the gas, and especially the cost of NOT getting the outcome. If you value the outcome you have an obligation to do what you can to get there.
If you can do it yourself, and that is the best use of your time and effort then by all means, do that.
If you are not confident with the tongs and when to flip the steaks, you are better off with the small cost of bringing in a decent BBQ cook than plating up something nobody sees value in.
You are not paying for the BBQ cooks time. You are investing in the expertise being applied in the best way to produce great mouth-watering steaks!
So when you next look at the cost of the “over-priced consultants” consider the “under-valued outcome” that you seem to prefer was not delivered. When you compare the cost of the project experts with your team day rates consider honestly whether your team, who are already telling you they are stretched, really have the time and experience to add the project to their schedule.
It’s not the cost you need to be focusing your worries on. It is the benefit and the value from delivering the outcomes, and what help you need to get there, that should be what is keeping you up at night.
