As a university professor, I was fond of assigning group projects. Besides teaching leadership and delegation–not to mention the wisdom of contingency planning–group work is the central mechanism for getting things accomplished in a business setting. I often pointed out to my students that there are no sole proprietorships among the Fortune 500.
So, having recently read Timothy Ferris’ best seller The 4-Hour Workweek, I may have to reconsider that oh-so-20th-century assertion. Mr. Ferris takes the notion of organization and delegation to new extremes via the time-shifting, currency-altering, Web-based world of the 21st century entrepreneur. In light of the variety of outsourcing scenarios presented in his book, those Fortune 500 corporations may well find themselves being successfully challenged by techno-savvy sole proprietors backed by legions of virtual assistants.
Spotlighting firms such as Brickwork India and GetFriday.com, the author points out that it’s not merely the relatively modest pay-scale for highly educated, offshore knowledge workers that makes them perfect candidates for rounding out an understaffed Western business. An equally strategic element is that an assignment made at the end of an American or European work day can be accomplished overnight during normal working hours in India.
So what kind of tasks can a virtual assistant located halfway around the globe perform for your company? Well, virtually anything that doesn’t require a physical presence. They can perform information research, draft written documents, maintain the firm’s accounting books, and even sift through an overloaded e-mail backlog.
Of course, that does raise the question: How many virtual assistants does it take to screw in a light bulb? Well, some things continue to be best done in person. Still, all those outsourced tasks could provide you with enough time to write a best-selling book of your own! So next time, DataDocsDailyDose.com will examine how technology has transformed the modern world of publishing.
–J.D. Mosley-Matchett, Ph.D.
“The Data Doc“
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