So let’s look more closely at off-shoring. Transferring your business, or part of your business, offshore provides a unique business opportunity.

You are very likely to find, and should certainly be aware, that change management during a business transfer is often information rich and knowledge poor. The vast quantity of information involved during an offshore business transfer has limited value without having an associated business process to make it of value.

So what do you do to avoid this happening to you? To ensure you create the associated business process? Preparing the change management team and working with them throughout can be vastly beneficial. A coaching change management approach is an effective way to convert vast quantities of information and knowledge into enduring capability and value.

Capability is demonstrated by good decision making which can be assessed during the transfer process. There is a huge risk that this capability is lost during an offshore business transfer with disastrous results; often leading to a vast loss of responsiveness, customer perceived value and wholesale loss of intangible assets.

Successful change management is almost entirely centred on developing the capability within the offshore management team to support sound decision making, defining the core team, their boundaries and how or if they are to be engaged in the decision making and implementation process.

During these challenging times leadership is key – you need to articulate a vision compellingly and to get the best from people so that their work manifests that vision. Getting the best from people means giving them your highest quality attention and believing that they can think for themselves better than anyone else can.

It is fundamentally true that when a person has been able to find the solution for themselves they will own it, pursue it and deliver it. And more importantly this approach means that during offshore business transfers the local offshore management team will develop their own capability to standalone after your support staff has left.

When people are simply told what to do and how to do it they invariably ignore it or don’t understand what needs to be done. If you fall into this trap you will be missing a rare business opportunity and your offshore experience will be a troubled one.