The build-or-buy balancing act

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The build-or-buy balancing act.

Where does your talent come from? Where is tomorrow’s talent? all working for you right now? Inversely, you’re key people today- where were they 5 years ago- all working for the company, elsewhere? or a mixture of both?

Unless something unusual has happened, or you’ve particularly unusual operations, it’s both. Most organisations get good people both through a combination of internal development and external recruitment.

But: most organisations don’t do this on purpose, it just sort of happens. They don’t do it with a plan, or a philosophy, guide-rails, objectives or a broad approach. they just muddle through. And you can do better than muddle through, can’t you?

This article is a consideration for why building is a good thing, but it’s only half the equation.

Why to build:  keeping knowing how to do what you do

The problem with people is that they are people, not robots.  People resign, retire, get sick, get hit by the proverbial bus (do we fear buses the way gauls feared the sky falling on their heads?).   For organisation to have long term resilience, backups need to be built into the system.   All teams need to have the capacity to provide cover, either permanently or temporarily. 

To demonstrate this let’s discuss a good tool for L&D, short term job rotation.  Everyone needs to go on leave, so while they are away, often someone else needs to cover their role.  Moving someone sideways, or up, temporarily for a period of training and cover the incumbent’s absence has a number of benefits, including ensuring at least two people in the company can do that work.  For everyone role in the company (including the CEO) you want someone else who could do it reasonably well, and a couple of others who could do it in a pinch.

Why to build:  building what you’ll need tomorrow

What the organisation needs today is not what it needs in the future.  Not that long ago, skills such as shorthand, wood turning, dictation, and a tolerance to secondhand smoke were key workforce skills, but times change.  Changing technology and customer demands shifts what your business needs to be good at doing, its best to get ahead of the game you need to build that competency in advance.

A good way to do this is conferences.  It’s not the only way, but conferences are a good example of getting your key people out of the day-to-day, thinking beyond their daily work pressures and what might be coming up.  Conferences are good places to listen to people talk about different things, new ideas, common problems and potential solutions. 

Why not build

Building through training and development opportunities works best when you have a) time to do it, and b) good clay to work with- i.e. someone suited to do it.  But that might not be the case- your needs might be immediate and urgent, and you need to address the skill gap now, in which case buying might be the best option i.e. hiring in the needed skills or getting in contractors. 

Alternatively you might not be have someone well suited to grow and develop, which is entirely possible.  I would however caution the risk of stereo-typing on age here- it’s easy to assume older employees are less likely to want to learn and innovate, and assume only young employees can learn and develop.  

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