Growth time checklist: 20 checks before you outsource

Key takeaways

This checklist covers the 20 checks that decide whether outsourcing gives your team more time for growth. They fall into four groups: measure where time goes, release the right work, redirect freed hours to goals, and protect them afterwards. Work through it before the handover and again at day 90.

• Measure: 5 checks on where time goes today.
• Release: 5 checks on what moves and how.
• Redirect: 5 checks on goals and owners.
• Protect: 5 checks on keeping the hours.

Why use a checklist?

Because the steps that make outsourcing produce growth are easy to skip under pressure. Most firms plan the handover carefully and forget to plan the hours. A checklist makes the second half as deliberate as the first.

• How outsourcing gives your internal team time for growth
• Release, redirect, protect: the GBL growth time model

Measure: where does time go?

• Each person has tagged a normal week as run, grow or manage.
• Growth time is known by role.
• Routine work in growth roles is listed.
• Full cost per worked hour is calculated.
• Admin share of payroll is estimated.

• How much of your team's week goes on growth?
• How much of your payroll pays for admin?

Release: what moves out?

• Work is recurring, rule-based, screen-based and checkable.
• It comes from roles that will do growth work.
• The process is documented with exceptions.
• A written contract covers data processing.
• A handover dip is planned for.

• How to identify tasks suitable for outsourcing
• The handover dip: why growth time arrives later

Redirect: where do hours go?

• Two or three growth goals are written.
• Each has an owner, measure and date.
• Each person's freed hours are allocated.
• Skills gaps have a training plan.
• The team has been told what changes and why.

• Decide where freed team hours go before handover
• Get your team to own the growth plan

Protect: how do hours stay free?

• Growth blocks are in diaries from week one.
• A routing rule sends new admin to the provider.
• Escalations go to one named person.
• Freed hours are checked fortnightly.
• A quarterly review is booked.

• Protect your team's growth time from creeping work
• Quarterly check: is outsourcing still freeing time?

When is the checklist overkill?

For a single small task freeing two or three hours, a goal and a diary block are enough. Use the full list when 15 hours or more are moving.

• Teams of five or fewer: is there enough to free?

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: a firm completes every release check and none of the redirect checks. Working through the list before signing adds two weeks of planning and avoids months of freed time leaking away.

• See client work
• BPO Solutions for UK businesses

Using this checklist

• Run it before the handover.
• Mark each item yes, no or partly.
• Fix every no before work moves.
• Repeat at day 90.

• SaaS start-ups: keep the founders on product and sales
• A growth time worksheet: hours freed and where they go

Next step

Print the 20 checks and mark them for your planned handover. Count the noes.