Here’s a bright idea posited by Bruce A. Stewart in “Understanding the Goals of Outsourcing,” on CIO Today. If you’re an executive whose company has failed in a particular outsourcing engagement, don’t fire the participants. Those folks have valuable knowledge that your firm shouldn’t be quick to throw away. Frequently, failures hinge on “organizational shortcoming — not knowing enough before negotiating a deal.”
What should happen in the face of failure is to “roll up your sleeves and get busy negotiating changes to the agreement.” (Of course, the article reminds us, you must have something to bribe the vendor with — either an extension to the contract, new business, or increased costs from the contracted terms.)
The story’s got other areas to examine for potential sources of problems (how about users who haven’t adjusted their practices to the new world order?). But the bottom line is that this is all a grand experiment for any of us (because each situation calls on a zillion variables) and as failure happens, so should the learning.
