Capability Development: In-house or External Provider?

Deciding whether to provide capability development internally or to use external suppliers depends on several factors, including your organisation’s specific needs, resources, and goals. Here are some considerations for both approaches:

Internal Capability Development

Pros:

• Customisation: Write programs specifically to your company’s culture, values, and strategic goals.
• Cost-Effective: Potentially lower costs if you have the necessary resources and expertise in-house.
• Control: Greater control over the content, delivery, and timing of the development programs.

Cons:

• Resource Intensive: Requires significant time, effort, and expertise to develop and maintain effective programs.
• Finding the Right Expertise : Requires access to the latest thinking, and people who can interpret that
• Limited Perspective: May lack the fresh insights and innovative approaches that external experts can provide.

External Capability Development

Pros:

• Expertise: Access to specialised knowledge and skills that may not be available internally and finding the right partner to really ‘do’ customisation.
• Efficiency: External providers can often deliver programs more quickly and efficiently.
• Innovation: Exposure to new ideas and experiences, best practices, and different techniques from industry experts.
• Scalability: Easier to scale programs up or down based on your needs.
• Skilled Facilitation : Use experts with a vast range of experience (and stories) to deliver to engage your teams with a view from the wider world, not just the internal view.

Cons:

• Cost: Can be more expensive, especially for high-quality providers.
• Alignment: External programs may need adjustments to align perfectly with your company’s specific needs and culture.
• Dependency: Risk of becoming reliant on external providers for critical development needs.

Tough call, right? Which is why, Pure Blue Ocean offer the Hybrid Approach, where we work with our customers to combine the strengths of both internal and external capability development. We listen to your needs and objectives; get under the skin of your business to develop programmes that are customised for you and your teams, ensuring your culture and values resonate throughout. We also develop programmes in conjunction with our customers, and ‘train the trainer’ so you can deliver the programmes in-house, making it cost effective. If you want to know more, get in touch at help@pureblueocean.com