In various surveys of CEO’s around the world, the need to recruit and retain ‘talent’ is always identified as a critical strategic imperative and this has only been increased since the start of the pandemic. Yet many remain disappointed with their organisation's ability to do so. Why is this?
During the 15 years I have worked in the field of leadership consulting, I have seen a huge variety in the tools, models and processes organisations have used to identify their often elusive ‘high potential employees’, all with varying levels of success, often little. It has been 50 years since the nine-box matrix was developed, originally as a framework for multi-business organisations to prioritise their investments among their business units. Only in later years did it evolve into the tool universally used as a means for categorising employees based on their current performance and future potential.
Prompted by a client wanting to understand more about current best practice, I designed a research project to find out what organisations currently do to identify their high potential employees and which practices yield the most success.
My research suggests on average, high potential employees are only identified accurately 45% of the time, meaning that of the relatively small number of individuals that have been identified as being 'high potential', less than half of them go on to be successful in bigger, more senior positions. This is in line with broader research which suggests up to half of leaders’ derail, giving rise to the ‘Peter Principle’.
There are various reasons for this:
Given the apparent importance placed on recruiting and retaining talent, it is clear the responsibility for nurturing talent should be a key focus for the business and not, as it is too often the case, an HR led initiative. The lack of true engagement from those at the top of the organisation is an underlying factor as to why many organisations fail to implement successful programmes.
Despite finding many examples of where high potential programmes fail, whilst there is no ‘silver bullet’, my research did identify several themes across those organisations that do have high levels of success.
Is it about identifying individuals ready for the next move or those with the potential for longer term success? Answering the age-old question of ‘potential for what?’. Identifying individuals that show the potential to move into a specific role in the short to medium term, i.e. their ‘readiness’ is also much easier than trying to, at best guess, whether someone can move into a role 2-3 levels above their current one in 5+ years.
Use evidence-based research to determine those attributes and experiences that genuinely indicate potential and ensure it is robust. Something is not better than nothing!
Executive team buy-in and visible sponsorship is a must as is training for all managers so they can recognise and objectively evaluate their team members and know how to support them in their personal and career development. Without it, they will continue to confuse high performers with high potentials.
Cross-organisation talent reviews help to remove bias from the process. Also, consider using a more rigorous process such as assessment to gain a more in-depth perspective and better identify individual development needs.
Having specific programmes to support the development of high potential employees is a valuable exercise but as much as possible they need to be tailored to suit the individuals and be relevant to their next career move. Programmes that work best are those with a combination of experiential learning supported by individual coaching and/or mentoring, the latter also helping them navigate their own career path.
The identification of high potential employees should not be the end goal. The mechanism for moving such individuals up or across the organisation also needs to be well thought through. Although distinctly different processes, high potential identification and development need to be aligned with succession planning, resource management and talent acquisition, all of which should be focused on ensuring organisations have the right people in the right roles and have a clear pipeline of talented individuals ready to move into them at the right time.
Identifying talented individuals with the potential to fill critical or senior roles in the future is a vital and challenging process but is certainly doable if approached in the right way. However, there are significant risks of getting it wrong. Either commit to doing it properly or don’t do it at all!