Good communication is essential for your startup company to get more out of outsourcing. But to achieve it, you need to be strategic in your approach. The idea is to make that communication more natural and conducive to the project. Learn how to develop that strategy and effectively implement it with your provider.
Communication Challenges For Your Startup Company When Outsourcing
Because of its nature, outsourcing presents some unique communication challenges. To overcome these, you need to understand how they affect the work exactly. As each outsourced project is different, these challenges can play out differently. Nevertheless, there are common ones that you should be ready to respond to.
Organizational Barriers
Working with another company will often require you to deal with a vastly different organization from yours. That means that they might have a different approach to communication than you have. For instance, if you are more on the traditional business model, you might have issues working with a provider who prefers an agile means of communication.
Image from Torben Rick.
Note that this isn’t just about deciding what model to adopt for the project. You and your outsourcing provider need to sit down and discuss what aspects of these models would best work for the particular project. That requires you to be more analytical.
Cultural Differences
Another aspect that affects how you communicate with an outsourced team is the cultural differences. This can come on different levels. First is the differing company cultures. The above is an example of such. But even smaller differences in company culture can influence your ability to communicate.
Outside of that, you might also find yourself dealing with regional cultural differences. That is especially the case when outsourcing internationally. The language barrier is probably the biggest concern you might have here. Even if you both speak English, there would still be certain nuances that can affect the conversation.
Comic by Scott Adams.
Additionally, there is the overall mentality that each side has. These are also affected by their regional culture. Not being familiar with such differences can result in miscommunication that would slow down work. Overcoming this barrier can require more time since you won’t know about all the specific nuances in one go.
Building A Better Communication Strategy For Your Startup Company
As have already said, overcoming these challenges will require you and your chosen outsourcing partner to be more strategic in your communication. Here, it would help you to develop a more concrete communication plan. For this, there are several things that you need to take into account.
- Target audience: Who are the ones that care about the outsourcing initiative. Consider not just the teams but other stakeholders who might want to interact with the outsourced team.
- Priorities: Which of the different target audiences should you prioritize more? That will help you properly categorize your communications.
- Key messages: Determine what you want each audience to do. This can be things like what kind of responses they should give your inquiries. And other communications.
- Vehicle: Identify what kind of communication channels you should use for given situations.
- Barriers: Identify the possible barriers preventing you from effectively sending and receiving messages.
- Timing: Determine when the most appropriate time you should be communicating.
These components are not only for your general communication plan. You should also consider these when dealing with specific communication situations.
Deciding When Your Startup Company Should Start Communications
When communicating with outsourced teams, you need to establish everything before the project starts. During the provider selection phase, gauge how well each candidate interacts with you. This isn’t just about determining which one is the most responsive.
Image from Entrepreneur.
Here, you also get to determine the possible communication strategies you can use with the potential provider. At this point, you can probe them further about these strategies. Their response will give you an idea of how well prepared they are in establishing an efficient channel with you.
Ensuring Frequent Communication
An issue when communicating with an outsourced team is them not responding as often as you might like. Note that there are various reasons why this might be the case. For instance, it might be that the provider just isn’t used to the frequency of communications you want. Or they might not be able to meet with the right person at the right time.
Get in touch with the provider immediately to sort out the issue. To get a better result from the discussions, you might need to be more flexible in your communication requirements. For instance, you might opt for less frequent engagements if that would suit them better. But you should be clear about the various changes in the requirements to accommodate their preferred frequency.
Setting The Tone
You might not realize it, but your tone also affects how well you communicate with your outsourced team. Using the right tone can help the outsourced team better understand your message. But beyond that, it can also lead the team to be more receptive and respond faster.
Image from Buffer.
Take time to understand the different tones that you and your outsourcing provider utilize. You can work with them to further define these tones and make sure that everyone can understand them.
Use 1-on-1 Communications Wisely
When working with outsourced teams, you often talk to them as a whole. However, there might be instances where you need to communicate with one member. For instance, you might need to speak to that member to deal with a specific issue. Or a member of the outsourced team needs to escalate a case.
In such cases, you need to ensure that there is still transparency in the communications. Provide a means of getting everyone in the team informed without needing to meet. You also need to record all 1-to-1 communications for later reference.
Overcommunicate The Right Way
Being in constant touch with your outsourced team is vital to track their progress better. And here, some experts would advise that you should overcommunicate. But while it is a good one, you should be aware when you might be going beyond that.
Image from Bedoor Bluemoon.
Keep in mind that the outsourced team is already trained to work independently. Thus, you need to know when to leave them alone. However, you still need to ensure there is enough feedback for you to go by.
Succeed In Your Startup Company Outsourcing Effort With Good Communication
We at Virtua Solutions understand how important communication is for the success of any outsourcing effort. As such, we work closely with your startup company on a strategy that works best for the project at hand. Sign up with us today so we can start building that strategy with you.