I can make this my shortest blog. The answer to this question is:

Sort of. But not really.

However, you don’t pay me the big bucks to give you five small words and no long-winded explanation to accompany it. So, here’s your money’s worth

You Can Buy Talent

You can buy people who know how to perform the functions within your organization. Colleges and technical schools turn out people every day who have up-to-date knowledge. Other companies have people you can hire away from them. They can write code for you in the most popular programming languages. They know the tax laws.

Here’s the problem. You can hire people who can write code, but they don’t know the history of your particular needs and why your code was written as it was. They won’t know why you included certain fields and chose to delete others. They won’t understand the rationale behind your drop-down menus.

Tax attorneys and accountants know the latest tax laws. However, they may not understand your industry, your business structure and how your particular situation affects the way you report and file.

When you are capturing internal knowledge, you are capturing the details of what makes your company tick, and the design and quality that makes your products valuable in the marketplace. You can only get that kind of information from the subject matter experts who have expertise in your organization. Your SMEs know who to call, and which button to push to make your unique machine operate. If you don’t ask your internal experts now, you won’t know about it until the machine breaks down and they aren’t around to tell you. Or when the IRS comes calling.

You Can Buy Training

You might decide that if you lose your internal experts, you can always buy training. That is partially correct. You can always buy training, but you may not be able to buy the training you need. If you hire a generalist training company, you will get general training. An outside firm can teach you skills like project management. Or they can come in and write customized training for your needs. If you hire a company to come in and write customized training programs, they still need to talk to your internal experts and the problem becomes a self-perpetuating loop.

You Can’t Buy What Makes You Unique

Your internal trainers are all about you. Your internal trainers know your business. The key is to make sure they are able to do what you need them to do. They need budget and they need bandwidth to help you capture and preserve the knowledge and skills that make your customers keep coming back.

Internal trainers become experts-by-association. For that reason alone, internal training isn’t a nice-to-have and first-to-go when you are cutting back. Your internal trainers, and by extension all the mentors and experts you have internally who train new hires and people moving up, are the lifeblood of your organization.

The C-suite needs to be working with the training department to make sure that the current business is well-understood and well-mapped, and that future products and markets are in their line of sight. Training is about equipping your most valuable asset, your people, to maximize the profitability of your company, and that calls for ongoing alignment between the strategists and those required to execute the plan.

You may be able to buy smart people and good training on an as-needed basis, but you can’t buy your internal culture and company-specific knowledge off-the-shelf.

Does your C-Suite align with the training department?