Why outside help so often disappoints
An owner hires a firm or a freelancer to take work off their plate. There is a good first meeting. A month later the owner is answering a stream of questions, rewriting drafts that do not sound right and chasing for things they expected to arrive on their own. They conclude that it is quicker to do it themselves.
Sometimes the outsider is simply not good. More often the arrangement was set up to fail. The outsider had no access to what was happening in the firm, no clear list, three people giving conflicting comments and nobody with the authority to say yes.
A new employee would struggle under those conditions too. The difference is that employees get a desk, an introduction and a manager. Outsiders are often handed a login and expected to guess.
The fix is to treat an outside manager the way you would treat a good hire. Bring them in, tell them what is theirs and give them someone to answer to.
Start with a list, not a job title
Titles mean different things to different people. A list does not.
Before any work begins, write down what the outside manager will deliver and how often. Be concrete. Not “handle social media” but “three posts a week on two named accounts, drafted monthly for approval, with messages checked each working day.” Not “help with the website” but “review fifteen pages and rewrite five.”
Write down what is outside the list as well. If design, photography or advertising spend is not included, say so. Most arguments in outsourced work are about something each side assumed the other had agreed to.
A good list has three columns: what is delivered, by when and who approves it. It fits on a page. Both sides keep a copy.
Most arguments in outsourced work are about something each side assumed the other had agreed to.
Name one approver
This single decision prevents more trouble than any other.
Work that goes out in the firm’s name needs a yes from the firm. If that yes can come from the owner, the partner, the office manager and the owner’s spouse, the outside manager will receive four sets of comments that contradict each other, and the piece will go round in circles.
Pick one person. Everyone else may have opinions, and they give them to the approver, who sends one consolidated response. In a regulated firm, compliance review is a separate, fixed step with its own deadline, not a fifth voice in the same thread.
Then agree a time limit. For routine work, a reasonable rule is that the approver responds within a set number of business days, and silence after that counts as approval. It sounds strict. In practice it is what keeps a calendar moving when the approver has a heavy week, and it can be relaxed for anything sensitive.
Give real access, and keep ownership
An outside manager cannot represent a firm they cannot see into. They need to know what was finished this week, what is coming and what clients are asking. That means a place in the weekly conversation and access to the tools where the work happens.
Access and ownership are different things, and it is worth being exact about both.
The firm owns: the domain name, the website, every social account, the email list, the photographs it paid for and the listings. These are registered in the firm’s name with the firm’s email address and payment card.
The manager is given: a named login or a delegated role on each, with the least access the task needs. Not a shared password on a sticky note.
Keep a simple record of who has access to what. When the arrangement ends, or when a member of staff leaves, you remove their access in ten minutes and nothing is lost.
If an outside firm ever suggests registering your domain, your accounts or your listings in their name for convenience, decline. It is a common way for a small firm to lose control of its own public face.
Set a weekly rhythm
A standing conversation of twenty or thirty minutes, same day, same time. It needs only three questions.
- What happened last week?
- What is due this week, and what does the manager need from the firm?
- What needs a decision?
The manager writes up the answers in a few lines and sends them to everyone concerned. That note is the memory of the arrangement. When someone asks in three months why a decision was made, the answer is there.
Outside that conversation, agree how to reach each other. One channel for routine matters, checked daily. A phone call for anything urgent. Not five different apps.
Owners sometimes resist a weekly meeting because they hired help to save time. The meeting is what saves the time. Without it, questions arrive one by one all week.
Brief once, properly
In the first fortnight, an outside manager needs to learn how the firm thinks and talks. Time spent here is repaid many times over.
Give them:
- The one page that says who you are, what you are about and why someone should hire you. If it does not exist, writing it together is the best first task.
- Examples of writing you consider right for the firm, and one or two you consider wrong, with a sentence on why.
- Words you never use and claims you never make.
- The rules of your profession on advertising, privacy or disclosure, and the name of the person who reviews for them.
- The clients you most want more of, described in a few lines.
- Introductions to the people they will deal with: staff, the web developer, the photographer, the accountant.
Then let them sit in. An hour listening to how the owner describes the work to a client teaches more about voice than any style guide.
Give feedback that can be used
When a draft is not right, the tempting response is to rewrite it. That fixes the piece and teaches nothing, so the next one will be wrong in the same way.
Useful feedback names the problem and the reason. “Too formal. We talk to clients the way we would across a counter.” “We would not claim that. We can say we have done it since a given year, and leave it there.” “Lead with the result, not the process.”
Collect comments and send them once. Ten notes in one message can be dealt with in an hour. Ten messages over three days cannot.
Agree how many rounds of changes are normal. One round on routine pieces is usually right. If most pieces need three, the brief is unclear and it is time to go back to the one page.
Say when something is good, and say why. People repeat what they are told worked.
What stays with the owner
Handing over tasks does not mean handing over the firm. Three things stay with you.
Your point of view. What the firm believes, what it will and will not do, what it wants to be known for. An outside manager can draw this out and write it down. They cannot invent it.
Your relationships. Clients, referral partners and key suppliers know you. The manager supports those relationships and does not stand in for them.
The final say. Nothing is published in your name without your approval. A manager who is uneasy with that is the wrong manager.
Everything else is open to delegation, and most owners find they can let go of more than they expected once the first month has gone well.
Signs it is working
After six to eight weeks you should notice some plain changes.
- You are asked fewer questions, and they are better ones.
- Drafts sound like the firm on the first pass more often than not.
- Things you had forgotten about are getting done.
- The weekly note tells you something you did not already know.
- You have stopped keeping a private list of marketing tasks in your head.
If none of that is true by then, say so directly in the weekly conversation. Either the setup needs changing, with a clearer list, a single approver or better access, or the fit is wrong.
Ending well
A sound arrangement is easy to leave. Agree at the start what happens at the end.
You should be able to stop by giving written notice. You should receive every file, draft and record made for you. Access is removed, passwords are changed and the accounts carry on in your name as they always did. Payments made cover work done.
An easy exit also makes for a longer relationship. Neither side stays out of difficulty. They stay because it works.
Putting it into practice
If you are about to bring in outside help of any kind, do four things first: write the list, name the approver, check that every account is in the firm’s name and put a weekly conversation in the calendar.
This is how we set up every engagement of our own. Our 90-Day Plan states what you receive, how many rounds of changes each piece gets and what happens if you stop early. If you want to know more about the role itself, read What an outsourced business manager does.