Is there a right way to put people in boxes?
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In this article we’re going to look at something which is too often overlooked when talent planning – that individuals make choices during their careers about how much challenge or stretch they want at a particular point in time. At some time in pretty much every life, we find our commitments at work need to take a back seat to our home commitments.
It’s crucial that your talent mechanisms make it easy to discover the will of people to take on challenges as well as their capability to do so. Because while their capability to take on additional challenges may remain a constant, their will to do this can vary dramatically between one point and another. The danger is, that managers assume that if someone has the capability to progress fast, they also have the will to do this. And that can make your succession planning data unreliable.
Why is it hard to get an accurate read on someone’s desire to fast track? A common tool that organisations use is the ‘9-box grid’. This traditionally maps “potential” on one axis and “performance” on another. Under-performers are included on this grid, so you end up with a grid that has a “good” box at the top right, and a “bad” box at the bottom left. The top 5% of performers with the most potential are in the “best box”. Those staff in the opposite corner are in the “bad” box – under-performers who may be under the microscope and who may be managed out of the organisation.
The issue that this creates is that managers (and their staff if there is transparency) will start to see all boxes as being on a gradient from ‘good’ to ‘poor’. If you just use this box for talent managing the top 5% this may not seem too much of a problem. But at the heart of your talent systems, you have a matrix that can demotivate 95% of your people… This is why managers resist using the traditional 9-box grid; their job is to value and motivate all of their people. The traditional 9-box grid is not fit for purpose when taken out of the rarified air of corporate auditing. In the 21st century, we need a new box that engages managers and staff in positive discussions about how to use their potential.
Have you ever noticed that perhaps 25% of the people invited into your high potential scheme don’t seem to make good use of all the opportunities it presents to get ahead?
Quite often, these people have never been asked how much stretch they want right now. They’ve just been congratulated by their manager on attaining a rare place on the high potential programme. Now they might have a lot of demands in their life outside work. Maybe a young family they want to spend time with, or a sick partner, or ageing parents to support. But the pressure to get into the ‘best box’ makes it hard to turn the opportunity down. There is a fear that they will lose their foothold on the career ladder if they step aside – that they will be labelled ‘unambitious’, and won’t be able to recapture the ‘high potential’ label later, when they are ready for stretch. So they accept the invitation…but their heart really isn’t in picking up the challenge, at this point in their life.
There are other ways that the good-bad dimension distorts your talent planning. For example, talented people who are trying to create work life balance can be constantly ‘pushed out of their comfort zone’ by an ambitious manager who sees them as their natural successor. These talented people can end up seeking a less demanding job elsewhere. Another example is thinking that you have the successor lined up to take over from that ambitious high potential manager – and being shocked to find that the ‘successor’ turns the job down!
To get accurate information for talent management, you need two tools.
- A mechanism that asks people how much stretch people want right now, and regards seeking a balanced life as an honourable choice.
- And a 9-box grid that doesn’t have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ boxes that make people worried about talking openly about these honourable choices they want to make.
Instead, create a 9-box grid of people who are all performing at a satisfactory, good and excellent level. Then all the boxes are good, and can have positive descriptions and definitions. People can move around the boxes according to not only their capability, but also the choices they want to make about stretch. Dealing with underperformers takes place in a different discussion.
We’ve tried out this approach in several large and smaller organisations, and managers find it a revelation that makes them think differently about talent; a number of organisations are now adopting our 21st century 9 box grid as the basis for their talent management because it is so well received by managers.
Not only is this good for people; it’s also important if you want to get solid talent data. Your managers need to be able to say “We’re really happy with your performance and what you’re delivering. We want to understand not only what you’re capable of doing, but the degree of stretch you want right now.” This makes it okay for employees to discuss how to move flexibly around the boxes on the grid based on their own choices. Only then can you have honest conversations about how best an individual can contribute to your organisation.
Take Away
If you want to do a good job of managing talent in your organisation, you need a 9-box grid and tools that are designed for managers, not just for top level discussions about the small percentage of fast trackers. Your 9-box grid needs to feel comfortable for everyone mapped on it – and they need to feel they can move about the grid, and are not ‘labelled for life’.
Talent & Potential have developed tools to enable managers and talent professionals to take an enlightened, 21st century approach to reviewing and discussing potential. Talk to us about talent systems, and how to roll talent management out to line managers.