Hmmm, no, I think the ability to outsource well is not itself easily outsourceable. E.g. if you have some method of identifying whether an outsourced factory will produce high-quality products, I guess you could train an outsourced team to do that identification, but that doesnât seem remarkably easier than hiring staff and training them on your identification methods.
I think there may be some confusion over the semantics of âcore competencyââI wasnât trying to say you could outsource the outsourcing, I was just saying âa companyâs biggest strength can be that it is effective at outsourcingââbut I feel like that confusion further reinforces my main point, in the first paragraph: it seems to me like âmanagement complexity/âdemandâ would be a better Y-axis label than âcore competency-nessâ?
I think you are saying something like: âoutsourcing is a managerial task, therefore bottlenecks on outsourcing are by definition bottlenecked on management.â
I think this is true, but I donât think itâs the most helpful way of phrasing it. E.g. many biology labs canât outsource their research (or even have it be replicated by labs which are almost identical) because their work relies on a bunch of tiny things like âyou should incubate the cells at 30°C except if you notice some of them starting to turn a little yellowish increase the heat to 32°C but then also you maybe need to add this nutrient bathâŚâ
You could argue that documenting these procedures is a managerial task, and therefore the outsourcing is bottlenecked on management â again, I think this is true, but it seems more insightful to describe these biological procedures as a core competency of the lab. (To me, at least, YMMV.)
I suppose âmanagement complexity/âdemandâ might indeed be a bit too narrow, but either way it just feels like youâre basically trying to define âcore competency-nessâ as âdifficulty of outsourcing this task [whether for management demand or other reasons],â in which case I think it would make more sense to just replace âcore competency-nessâ with âdifficulty of outsourcing this task.â
My worry is that trying to define âcore competency-nessâ that way feels a bit unintuitive, and could end up leading to accidental equivocation/âmotte-and-baileys if someone who isnât familiar with management theory/âjargon interprets âcore competencyâ as important functions X, Y, and Z, but you only mean it to refer to X and Y, reasoning that âZ is some really core part of our operation that we are competent at, but it can be outsourced, therefore itâs not a core competency.â
Hmmm, no, I think the ability to outsource well is not itself easily outsourceable. E.g. if you have some method of identifying whether an outsourced factory will produce high-quality products, I guess you could train an outsourced team to do that identification, but that doesnât seem remarkably easier than hiring staff and training them on your identification methods.
I think there may be some confusion over the semantics of âcore competencyââI wasnât trying to say you could outsource the outsourcing, I was just saying âa companyâs biggest strength can be that it is effective at outsourcingââbut I feel like that confusion further reinforces my main point, in the first paragraph: it seems to me like âmanagement complexity/âdemandâ would be a better Y-axis label than âcore competency-nessâ?
I think you are saying something like: âoutsourcing is a managerial task, therefore bottlenecks on outsourcing are by definition bottlenecked on management.â
I think this is true, but I donât think itâs the most helpful way of phrasing it. E.g. many biology labs canât outsource their research (or even have it be replicated by labs which are almost identical) because their work relies on a bunch of tiny things like âyou should incubate the cells at 30°C except if you notice some of them starting to turn a little yellowish increase the heat to 32°C but then also you maybe need to add this nutrient bathâŚâ
You could argue that documenting these procedures is a managerial task, and therefore the outsourcing is bottlenecked on management â again, I think this is true, but it seems more insightful to describe these biological procedures as a core competency of the lab. (To me, at least, YMMV.)
I suppose âmanagement complexity/âdemandâ might indeed be a bit too narrow, but either way it just feels like youâre basically trying to define âcore competency-nessâ as âdifficulty of outsourcing this task [whether for management demand or other reasons],â in which case I think it would make more sense to just replace âcore competency-nessâ with âdifficulty of outsourcing this task.â
My worry is that trying to define âcore competency-nessâ that way feels a bit unintuitive, and could end up leading to accidental equivocation/âmotte-and-baileys if someone who isnât familiar with management theory/âjargon interprets âcore competencyâ as important functions X, Y, and Z, but you only mean it to refer to X and Y, reasoning that âZ is some really core part of our operation that we are competent at, but it can be outsourced, therefore itâs not a core competency.â