Joel recently posted that you should stop outsourcing your career development to people who won’t live with the consequences. And it was a great post. But don’t stop there.

Stop outsourcing your success to vendors, consultancies, and analyst firms who don’t have to live with the consequences! (Unless, of course, you like paying The Vendor In Black for a mess and then paying The Vendor In Black [to] Come[s] Back and clean up the mess, and losing time and money just to get back to where you are now.)

Actually, to be more precise, stop outsourcing your success to vendors, consultancies, and analyst firms who don’t have to live with the consequences and who continue to get paid whether you succeed or not!

This means that you should not pick an analyst firm or consulting firm or (mega) source-to-[ay suites that claims to be a “one size fits all and does all” and essentially outsource your success to them!

For example, for:

• roadmaps: hire the right niche consultant expert who knows her continual employment relies on you actually getting results and who can help you honestly assess your current state and readiness
• tech selection: engage directly, or through the niche consultant above, an expert who knows who the vendors are, what they can do, and how to help you select the right one (and who knows she’ll never be consulted again if she doesn’t help you select the right vendor)
• implementation: hire firms with plans that go beyond initial implementation and put them on the hook for ongoing fixes (if they f*ck up), training, and support and where their profit, and margin, depends on your success. (And insist on hybrid payment models where every dollar beyond their fixed personnel costs depends on you realizing outcomes, as per our post on why you should STOP PAYING PROCURETECH/FINTECH ADVISORIES A DOLLAR JUST TO LOSE THREE DOLLARS!)

In other words, you have to find the right experts, determine your readiness, manage your own projects, and ensure your own adoption. At the end of the day, all the big providers care about is that the transfer clears. Your success, and your organization’s success, is up to you. All the princes do is watch,