Although I would rather not choose and take events as they come, I have learned that choice is inevitable. With utilities like Internet choosing is becoming even more difficult.

One option that is recurring in business is the one where you ought to choose between self production and the leverage on the work of others. You come across this choice in IT where outsourcing – leverage on third parties – is quite common nowadays and also the choice to tailor made a system or to buy a package that provides 80% of the functionality.

Yet in other areas, closer to home, you have to make similar selections. Sometimes you are not even aware that you could choose otherwise.

Take for instance the situation where you should explain to your customer where your company is located. How does this work? Let’s say that the company in question has a website on which it would like to inform potential customers and prospects. You are the webmaster or designer. What is your approach?

You could start with the address, than you could draw a map and finally you could give some directions on how the get there using either car, train or bus.

The other option is to hook up to software on the market that does this for you. There are plenty of geographical support tools, route planners and the like to interface to. Yet this requires a different mindset.

If you choose the first option you can start right away, you are not dependent on others and you can tailor it to your needs and wishes. In the other way you are limited by the features of the third party solution.

There are pro’s and con’s for either solution. Yet, these days, networking is still gaining importance. If you can leverage on others you probably get the job done with less resources, but in many times not exactly the way you want. It’s a simple dilemma that rules many business issues currently.

Your approach as a manager should be to communicate the main approach: leverage on the work of others or taking the risk of reinventing the wheel.

If you have read this, you can answer for our self what your own approach would be.

© 2005 Hans Bool / Astor White

Astor White is a traditional consulting company where Internet is the main interaction medium. By offering online tools we can address management issues in hours what normally would take days of consultancy. Astor White. Committed to your management issues. On a distance.

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