Capability and Capacity

When I was discussing the challenges of growing our business and hiring people, I said that our priority was to build the capability first and we can build the capacity later on. When I thought about this statement more, I realised that many organisations go through this challenge. Very often we have to take decision about hiring people in a given budget.

For example, the question that I was trying to address was whether to hire 2 people at entry level skills versus hire only 1 at an expert level.

With 2 people, it lowers our risk of failure (seemingly), it also allows us to regulate the cash flow.

On the other hand hiring one expert and having a cash outflow equivalent of two, increases the risks, if things don’t work out.

However the key question for me was more about capability vs. capacity. 1 expert gives us capability and 2 entry level skills gives us capacity. Based on the current needs I decided to go for ‘capability’ building.

Published by sachindabir

I consider myself a lifelong learner. I have many interests, but I am passionate about making society better, creating an impact thru meaningful actions. My interests include use of technology for enterprises, open source, reading biographies, behavioural psychology, dabbling in blogging, playing cricket, listening to music.

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