High potentialexperiencecycle glanceseries

AT A GLANCE SERIES

Copyright © 2010, Personnel Decisions International Corporation, d.b.a. PDI Ninth House. All Rights Reserved. 1

An IntroductionToday, more than ever, organizations must focus resources where they will provide the greatest benefit. Nowhere is this more true than in identifying and developing high-potential leaders.i These leaders, who have the potential to advance into significantly higher level roles or take on more challenging assignments, are critical to an organization’s long-term success.

Accurately identifying and developing high-potential leaders yields striking benefits:

• Greater bench strength for key positions

• Smoother transitions and shorter learning curves as leaders get up-to-speed more quickly

• Reduced risk of derailment

• Enhanced retention of key leaders, lowering recruitment costs

• Agility in pivotal talent pools

• Consistently high performance from a steady supply of superior leadership talent

Although 67 percent of companies take steps to identify high-potential leaders, only 15 percent are satisfied with their procedures.ii It’s easy to understand why. Current methods of identifying high potentials are fraught with subjectivity and bias. Leaders not identified as high potentials might disengage. Those labeled high potential may feel entitled to better treatment. Companies might nurture high potentials for years, only to watch them leave for new opportunities elsewhere.

Still, it is possible to achieve high performance from your high potentials—and do it faster—by focusing on practices that really make a difference.

High-Potential Experience Cycle™

Reframe Your Organization’s High-Potential Program for Optimal Impact

High-Potential Experience Cycle™ AT A GLANCE SERIES

Copyright © 2010, Personnel Decisions International Corporation, d.b.a. PDI Ninth House. All Rights Reserved.2

See the Whole Picture Through the High-Potential Experience Cycle™

Given the importance of cultivating your organization’s key leadership talent, it’s essential that you step back and look at the whole picture. Does your organization’s process and design address the organization’s current and future needs, encompass the whole person, and address the full experience cycle of high potentials as they move through the leadership pipeline?

Likely, you have witnessed situations in which an organization focuses solely on its objectives. High-potential leaders go through the motions, react with skepticism and/or cynicism, and achieve superficial results. On the other hand, organizations create a win/win when they align their objectives with leaders’ needs and goals. When they understand and incorporate the needs of both the organization and high-potential leaders into the design, it magnifies the value of the entire program, ensuring engagement, enhancing retention, and accelerating the supply of talented leaders who are ready to step into new roles when needed.

The High Potential Experience Cycle™ shows how to address needs of both the organization and high-potential leaders in a parallel process. As the organization goes through the process of identifying, developing, and deploying high-potential talent, leaders simultaneously plan and manage their own lives and careers.

Organization’sProcess

1. Forecast talent needs and requirements

2. Accurately identify and engage high potentials

3. Accelerate development for high potentials

4. Manage transitionsinto new roles

5. Address governance, communication, and evaluation

High-PotentialLeader’s Experience

1. Assess and plan forthe future

2. Commit and engage

3. Develop and learn

4. Transition and perform in new role

5. Manage work-and non-work priorities

3 Develop

3 T rans ition

2 Identify

1 Plan

5 Manage

High-Potential Leader’sExperience

OrganizationalHigh PotentialProcess


Copyright © 2010, Personnel Decisions International Corporation, d.b.a. PDI Ninth House. All Rights Reserved. 3

1. Plan for the FutureFOR THE ORGANIZATION FOR THE LEADER

FORECAST TALENT NEEDS AND REQUIREMENTS

1. Identify leadership roles and positions to be targeted

• C-suite, top 3%, pivotal roles, difficult to fill positions, etc.

• Consider current, near-term, and long-term strategic needs

• Where will you need more, better, or different leaders?

2. Define purpose, priorities, challenges, needs, and requirements for each role

• What kind of leaders do you need to fill those positions?

• What kind of challenges will they face?

• What do they need to do?

3. Define time frames: When do you need them?

4. Consider the supply: Hire or develop?

ASSESS AND PLAN FOR THE FUTURE

1. Clarify goals, values, and where you want to go

• What is most important and meaningful to you at work?

• What kind of organization (culture, environment, values, mission) do you want to work for?

• What are your short-term and long-term career goals?

• What matters to you outside of work? What are the implications for your career?

2. Assess capabilities and development needs

• What are your key strengths and how can you best deploy them?

• What are your key weaknesses and how can you mitigate them?

3. Assess career options and opportunities

• Where can you find or create the best opportunities to achieve your goals?

• What do you need to do to be successful in this organization?


Looking at the two perspectives in tandem, we see that each side comprises five key steps.

The organization’s talent process for high potentials includes:

1. Forecast talent needs and requirements

2. Accurately identify and engage high potentials

3. Accelerate development

4. Manage transitions into new roles

5. Address governance, communication, and evaluation

The high-potential leaders’ process involves:

1. Assess and plan for the future

2. Commit and engage as a high potential

3. Develop and learn

4. Transition and perform in new role

5. Manage work and non-work priorities

Let’s dig deeper into each section of the cycle.



3. Develop and Prepare for Future RolesFOR THE ORGANIZATION FOR THE LEADER

ACCELERATE DEVELOPMENT

1. Drive individual development

• Clarify development goals and objectives with individual leaders

• Craft short-term and long-term development plans

• Monitor and provide regular feedback on progress

• Clarify changing needs and expectations

• Review and update development plans

• Hold leaders and their managers accountable for progress

2. Drive systemic development processes

• Design development programs and experiences tailored to strategic needs and to leaders’ goals, values, and development needs

• Orchestrate short-term and long-term development activities

• tactical development programs, projects, and tasks

• job assignments, rotations, and key experiences

3. Reinforce a learning culture

• Equip everyone to be self-directed learners

• Support, recognize, and reward leaders who develop and share talent

• Support and protect leaders who experiment, take risks, and accept stretch assignments

DEVELOP AND LEARN

1. Prepare development plans

• Tactical plan to build capabilities for current/near-term performance

• Long-term/career plan (e.g., desired assignments and experiences over time) to prepare for future leadership roles

2. Learn strategies and skills for self-directed development

3. Adopt attitude of learning

• Cultivate curiosity; avoid arrogance and defensiveness

• Take risks and stretch yourself

4. Engage in development activities and on-the-job learning

5. Monitor and measure progress

• Address barriers

• Revise and update plans

2. Identify High PotentialsFOR THE ORGANIZATION FOR THE LEADER

ACCURATELY IDENTIFY AND ENGAGE HIGH POTENTIALS

1. Define required attributes of high-potential leaders

• Review relevant research

• Define terminology: potential, performance, readiness, fit

• Specify high-potential criteria and attributes

• for your organization

• for specific roles and positions

2. Identify high-potential candidates

• Structured talent reviews

• Nominate, screen, and assess

3. Inform and engage

• Clarify communication strategy and steps

• Discuss mutual expectations, commitments, and benefits

4. Align with HR systems (e.g., succession, selection/promotion)

COMMIT AND ENGAGE AS A HIGH POTENTIAL

1. Understand what it means

• Organizational commitment and expectations

• Potential benefits

• Personal time and energy required

2. Evaluate priorities

• Assess benefits relative to your personal and career goals

3. Commit to invest time and energy

4. Maintain humility and perspective

Copyright © 2010, Personnel Decisions International Corporation, d.b.a. PDI Ninth House. All Rights Reserved.


5

5. Manage the Broader ContextFOR THE ORGANIZATION FOR THE LEADER

ADDRESS GOVERNANCE, COMMUNICATION, AND EVALUATION

1. Set up high-potential management system and programs

• Allocate adequate resources and leadership

• Align with other systems and processes

2. Clarify governance policies and practices

• Transparency and communication

• Talent stewardship

• Transitions across boundaries

3. Create and implement a communication plan

4. Ensure management support and alignment

• Senior execs: teach, mentor, recognize, reward, role model

• Managers: support, develop, and share talent

5. Define employee brand and value proposition and how they apply to high-potential leaders

6. Evaluate impact and effectiveness

MANAGE WORK AND NON-WORK PRIORITIES

1. Develop an authentic, holistic vision for yourself and your life

• Clarify what really matters to you: personal and life goals and values

• Figure out where work and career fit in your life

2. Make appropriate choices to integrate work and non-work priorities

• Family

• Health and fitness

• Financial

• Community and social life

• Recreation and leisure

• Spiritual

4. Transition into New RolesFOR THE ORGANIZATION FOR THE LEADER

MANAGE TRANSITIONS INTO NEW ROLES

1. Assess readiness and fit for relevant roles

• Utilize available information from succession processes, high-potential programs, development plans and progress

• Gather other pertinent information

2. Select based on fit and opportunity for continued development

• Ensure the organization and hiring managers know which talent is available

• Ensure high potentials know which roles and positions are available

3. Support transitions

• Convey clear expectations for balancing performance and development

• Provide transition coaching and support

4. Reset expectations for the leader

• Acknowledge the risks in making this move

• Allow time and space for learning and for adjustment to new role

• Discuss their status as a high potential going forward

5. Maintain focus on engaging and meeting the broader needs of the leader

TRANSITION AND PERFORM IN NEW ROLE

1. Evaluate offer and decide whether to accept position

2. Clarify expectations, priorities, and objectives for the role

• What are you supposed to achieve and contribute?

• What are you supposed to learn?

3. Manage your Five Agendas as a Leader

• Business agenda

• learn the business and key metrics

• develop strategic and tactical action plans

• Leadership agenda

• review and refresh your leadership values and principles

• communicate and live your values as a leader

• Learning agenda

• reset assumptions

• tune into what you need to learn and unlearn to perform in the new role

• Relationship agenda

• engage and align team

• build relationships with key stakeholders

• Personal agenda

• clarify overall priorities and maintain equilibrium

• leverage your strengths and resilience during the transition



People Decisions Drive Organizational PerformancePeter Drucker claimed “Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization.” Decisions about high-potential leaders are among the most important of all those decisions, because they are key investments in the organization’s future.

Old ways of looking at high-potential talent simply do not work well. Organizations need a new way to think about potential and more effective ways to identify and develop potential to ensure that it turns into high performance. And they need to do all of this faster.

Reviewing the entire process to ensure alignment from start to finish is essential. But the real power is achieved only when you build the process to meet organizational needs and the needs of the high-potential leaders.

Engagement and retention are not issues that you deal with after you invest in your top talent. They are the natural result of how you interact with people at every step.

i Hagemann, B., & Chartrand, J. (2010). 2009/2010 Trends in Executive Development: A Benchmark Report. Oklahoma City, OK: Executive Development Associates.

ii Conference Board. (2005). US/KnowledgeCenter/ArticlesReports/ArticleDetail.aspx?cid=1735&tid=0.

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