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Using other people's resources

Resources are often seen to be one of the largest bottlenecks in getting things done. Whether it be budget constraints, infrastructure, number of people on your team or not enough time during the day. Have you ever thought of what you could accomplish if you had unlimited resources?

In his book, “The 4 Hour Workweek”, Timothy Ferriss describes methods of streamlining your work and using virtual assistants to handle the daily grind. That method may work great for specific kinds of work, but for most of us it is not very practical. However, there is a lot we can learn from the concepts he wrote about. The resource limitations mentioned above can be mitigated by using other people’s resources. We’re not talking about tapping into their water or electricity and stealing, but rather making strategic agreements that will bring about a win/win for both sides.



The first thing you want to look for is areas of either duplication or parallelism in other groups. Are they doing something similar to what you want to do that you can piggyback off of or even participate in at a fraction of the full cost. In small businesses, this is often done by colocation, sharing a secretary or outsourcing non-core business functionality, such as accounting and payroll. In large organizations, when you see that multiple teams are each standing up and maintaining their own infrastructure, that is the time to propose a centralized group that will handle it for everyone. 

This works in small doses as well. If you need something and there is another group that does something similar, you can ask if they would be willing to take on a new project. This will enable them to gain more knowledge and experience, as well as increase their value proposition to the organization. This is especially valuable if it can be genericized a bit and made useful for other groups as well. Instead of having your team fully supporting something, try to develop a cross-functional team of experts, sometimes called a guild, who will work together to support it. You get points for collaboration, offer something that is useful to multiple groups and best of all, share the cost among all the participating teams. 



Don’t forget about open source software. It is very likely that if you have a tooling or system need, there is already an open source option that meets your requirements. This is software that is developed by a community of developers and is free to use. If you have additional requirements, you can add to the existing software and contribute your changes back to the community. Finding an open source project that has an enterprise edition or products based on it is a great way of knowing that there is a strong backing to the software. Red Hat, the company I work for, participates in open source development communities, makes enterprise products out of the projects and all the software they sell is fully open sourced.



There are always ups and downs, ebbs and tides, in the busyness level of every group. Look for teams that are currently on a low and ask if they are willing to take on a limited set of tasks for a specific period of time.  Managers are always interested in keeping their people busy, so they will appreciate the opportunity. Individuals also have varying degrees of busyness. It is in their best interest to further their education and learning new things. This is especially valuable to them when they can get on the job experience in an area that they are interested in. Asking for volunteers for additional tasks that can help promote people’s goals, both long and short term, will be surprisingly successful. It is so difficult to gain practical experience in new areas, that giving people this opportunity will be considered by them to be a huge benefit. When asking for volunteers, you should specify what skills or experience will be gained by doing this work.

An important thing to remember is that collaboration from both sides is key. You don’t want to be looked at as the leech who is always taking things. When you have the opportunity to give, smile and give freely. Make sure that every usage of other people’s resources is:
  • Acknowledged and Appreciated
  • Reciprocated, when possible
  • Advantageous to both sides (win/win)


Being creative in understanding what resources are available to you will quickly remove bottlenecks and enable you to accomplish much more than you possibly could in an insular environment


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