The essential question: "Does this make sense?"

"Move everything to the cloud, it's more effective than in-house IT."

"Hire a virtual assistant, don't waste your time on grunt work."

We see these sort of sweeping statements advocating this or that business trend (or perhaps fad) all the time. A good deal of business-oriented media is devoted to popularizing concepts such as "cloud computing" and "virtual assistants"--and there are many detailed arguments advanced in favor of these practices.

The technical term for those arguments is "hype"; a more polite term would be "narrative", and a more cynical term would be "propaganda." One reason we can tell these arguments are hype is the same basic talking points are used, time and again. Both the mainstream and trade media are filled with examples of these and other tech narratives.

For example, here are the top five reasons to hire a virtual assistant, according to one VA networking site:

1. Lower operational costs

2. Make more efficient use of time

3. Keep up with technology

4. Enhance productivity

5. Convert your business into a hi-speed virtual office

Compare those to some of the reasons advanced to move infrastructure into a cloud computing environment:

1. You need to reduce operational costs, while increasing the effectiveness of IT processes.

2. Your clients require fast application implementation and deployment, and thus want to focus more on development while reducing infrastructure overhead

3. Tracking and upgrading underlying server software is a time consuming, yet essential process that requires periodic and sometimes immediate upgrades

4. It’s becoming more difficult and expensive to keep up with your growing storage needs

5. You’d like to build a widely distributed development team. 

The one sounds awfully similar to the other, doesn't it? How likely is it that two different business concepts would have the exact same talking points and justifications? The answer is "not very."

I want to take a moment to emphasize that I am not dismissing or rejecting these talking points per se. My company uses cloud-based systems and makes occasional use of virtual assistants; the justifications are in fact not too far off from these. Also, our hosted PBX and VoIP services are themselves cloud applications--attacking these concepts out of hand would be rather self-defeating.

However, we don't outsource everything, and we don't intend to. We don't encourage all our clients to eliminate a premise-based PBX--although we always encourage them to upgrade from legacy TDM systems to VoIP platforms. Several of our clients are very well served by premise-based telecommunications--that simply is the best solution for their business. Similarly, not all of our infrastructure needs are amenable to outsourcing. For some things, outsourcing just doesn't make good sense--it either does not reduce operational costs (in fact, cloud computing rarely achieves this, as I have written about before), or it entails a certain loss of control regarding business functions we deem vital. As a result, we approach each decision independent of others, scrutinizing each infrastructure and resource decision on its own merits; we demand of each decision that it be able to stand on its own.

Skepticism is a healthy habit to have. The sober reality of all advocacy, regardless of how well intentioned, is that it is at least to some extent hype. It is always propaganda--even when facts are directly referenced, it is (or should be) intuitively obvious that those facts are cherry picked to support a particular position. Wherever there is advocacy, there should be challenge. Your business deserves nothing less.

The talking points above can be cogent reasons for outsourcing particular functions. The talking points above will not be equally applicable to all business functions in all businesses. These talking points represent potential benefits, not actual benefits. Like all narrative, the talking points are hypothetical, not factual--they may apply, or they may not apply.

When making decisions about business infrastructure of any kind--whether to hire employees, outsource whole operations, use virtual assistants, or migrate IT infrastructures to a cloud environment--the most important criteria is that the chosen path must make sense. It must make sense for your business. It must make sense for you. It must make sense based on the facts surrounding your business. Never mind what other executives, other businesses are doing; you are not them and your business is not those other businesses.

Just because a particular trend is being talked up, being hyped, by various media outlets does not mean that trend will make sense for your business. In fact, many trends turn out to be harmful to the goals they purport to achieve--another popular idea, the open office environment, is proving to be quite counterproductive, and actually inhibits the very communication and collaboration it is meant to foster. As Ronald Reagan once said of his political opponents: "the trouble with our Liberal friends isn't that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." In business as in politics, hype and narrative are not the same as factual reality.

The factual reality of your business is always what matters most of all. That is the only reliable basis for making strategic decisions about resources and infrastructures. The factual reality of your business may mean outsourcing certain functions and tasks, but it may just as easily mean that outsourcing is the wrong approach. Making either assumption is both wrong and unnecessary. Don't assume, just get the facts that pertain to your business and your operations. Be skeptical of the hype and the narrative, and discard narrative when it doesn't agree with the facts.

The key to good business decision making is to look past the hype, the narrative, the propaganda. The key to looking past that hype is to always ask one simple question: "Does this make sense?"