Our Five Tips
At BlueSalt Consulting, we use our experience to help clients navigate resourcing challenges, tackle complex issues, and make informed decisions.
Whether you’re implementing a large project, or just need some short-term support, we’ve put together some tips to reduce the stress and help alleviate overwhelm.
1. Don’t Fail to Plan
Time for planning is often the first thing that goes when things get busy, however strategic planning and work forecasting is crucial.
If your work is reactive, identify what aligns with your purpose and operational knowledge. Then, build a buffer for reactive tasks. If your capacity falls short you have resourcing challenges and it’s time to either prioritise, cut back, or seek extra help.
If work falls outside of operational knowledge, plan early to manage these gaps by seeking short term or ongoing assistance and expertise.
2. Identify the Challenge
When faced with more tasks than hands, creativity becomes essential. Identify your strengths – “What do you do well?”. Look for areas where positive feedback is consistent and prioritise these areas internally, and outsource others. This is sometimes called working in your zone of genius.
Can you take smaller steps? Consider breaking up large projects or pieces of work into smaller chunks – what would you get done right now if you had the resources? Tackling a big project in small parts also allows for more specialised assistance.
Is there a bottleneck? Keystone work is work that, if completed, would unlock progress on other work. Alternatively, is there something or someone that is holding up other work from progressing? This is the place to focus efforts.
3. Boost Capability
If you don’t have the budget to expand your capacity, consider enhancing capability by up-skilling existing staff and members.
For example, at BlueSalt Consulting we offer grant writing training in addition to grant writing services, empowering organisations to handle it in-house. We also offer a Strategic Funding Advice & Alerts service where we help you to get funding ready and look for opportunities where you will be most competitive. This positions you to be ready to respond to funds as soon as they open, without wasted resources.
4. Ask Early
Don’t wait until deadlines tighten to seek help. Squeezed deadlines come at a cost – less than ideal outcomes in the short term and reduced productivity in the long term.
External services offer more than additional hands; they can inject fresh ideas, offer objective advice, save on recruitment and training costs or cover periods of leave.
At BlueSalt Consulting we bring the benefit of a strong team approach to consistently deliver high-standard results tailored to the needs of each client.
In addition to our own team, we have a range of trusted service provider partners selected for projects that require specialist expertise, including financial consultants, architects, quantity surveyors, economists and more.
5. Find the Right Fit
Choosing the right service partner is paramount. Ask questions like:
- Do they understand the context you operate in?
- Do they have experience in your industry or sector?
- Can they think creatively and solve problems?
- Do your values align and will they guide you based on evidence and objectivity?
Our tailored services offer not just added capacity and capability to navigate your resourcing challenges, but a partnership built on understanding, experience and creativity. For further advice on how to navigate your resourcing challenges, simply contact us.
