Last week on my Lykken on Lending radio show, we discussed the opportunity mortgage organizations are now facing in outsourcing a particular service--and it got me thinking about outsourcing in more general terms. Many leaders in our industry are afraid to outsource, because it means letting go of control. It involves a great deal of trust in the vendor and, therefore, entails a fair amount of risk. Now, this may sound like a bad thing. But, could it also be a good thing?
If your team bears less of the responsibility, that means less stress, less worry, less distraction, and less confusion. It also means more time to focus on other priorities, more opportunities for employees to strengthen their skills in their areas of expertise, and more focus on your organization's core competencies. When you shift the responsibility of a particular task or group of activities to a vendor, you are freeing yourself from the burden that responsibility brings. It's no longer on you—it's on the vendor now.
Understanding this, it's all the more important to do your due diligence in researching the vendor and drawing up the vendor agreement. Trust, value alignment and clarity of expectations are absolutely essential. Once all those hurdles have been overcome, though, and you've discovered the right vendor, that shift of responsibility can be liberating. You can't really move your company forward if you have all the excess weight slowing you down. Passing some of the responsibility off to a vendor can give you the momentum you need to push forward and take your company to the next level.
David Lykken is 40-year mortgage industry veteran who has been an owner operator in three mortgage banking companies and a software company. As a former business owner/operator, today David loves helping C-Level executives and business owners achieve extraordinary results via consulting, coaching and communications, with the objective of eliminating corporate dysfunction, establishing and communicating a clear corporate strategy while focusing on process improvement and operational efficiencies resulting in increased profitability. David has been a regular contributor on CNBC and Fox Business News and currently hosts a successful weekly radio program, “Lykken on Lending,” that is heard each Monday at noon (Central Standard Time) by thousands of mortgage professionals. He produces a daily one-minute video called “Today’s Mortgage Minute” that appears on hundreds of television, radio and newspaper Web sites across America. He may be reached by phone at (512) 501-2810 or by e-mail at [email protected].
