Once planning identifies a gap, the BASK gives four sourcing strategies: build, buy, borrow and bridge. Choosing among them turns on how durable the need is and whether the capability exists inside.
The four strategies
- Build: develop the capability in current employees.
- Buy: hire the capability permanently from the external market.
- Borrow: obtain capability from outside the permanent workforce for a defined need.
- Bridge: move existing employees from declining work toward roles where demand is growing.
Lead, lag, match are compensation pay-policy positions. Plan, do, check, act is a general quality cycle the BASK does not list here. "Recruit, retain, reward and retire" is a plausible slogan the BASK does not use at all.
Matching the strategy to the facts
- A hospital covering a six-month imaging surge with agency technologists: borrow. Outside capability, defined need, no permanent hire.
- A manufacturer closing a line whose 60 assemblers have transferable skills while a growing line needs 45 technicians: bridge. Existing employees redeployed from declining to growing work — and it serves the functional area's aim of closing competency gaps.
- A retailer with a durable, growing three-year need for data analysts, no internal skill base and a healthy external market: buy.
The decision logic
Three questions settle it:
- Is the need temporary or durable? Temporary points to borrow; durable rules it out.
- Does an internal foundation exist? If yes, build or bridge; if no, build alone is slow and uncertain.
- Can the market supply it now? If yes and the need is permanent, buy.
Apply that to the analyst case: borrowing through a staffing agency is a temporary solution to a permanent, growing need. Bridging store managers reassigns people who do not hold and cannot quickly acquire the competencies. Building through a long internal certification program only, when no internal foundation exists and the market can supply the skill now, is the trap answer — note the word "only," which is what makes it wrong.
Carry this: borrow is temporary and external, bridge is permanent and internal.