Hope everyone is enjoying the burst of summer sun! Sat in my garden having my morning coffee, I was reflecting on what our new members of The Talent Labs are talking to us about.
We’re growing rapidly with membership to the Talent Management and Development Labs and a hot topic for people right now is succession planning.
They’re asking with questions like:
- How do I improve or simplify our processes?
- Are people still using the 9-box grid? What alternatives are there?
- Can succession planning work across the whole organisation?
- How do you engage the business and people managers effectively?
- How do you demonstrate the value and return on investment?
From my experience, making this a core part of your people strategy and planning is absolutely vital. You need a simple process that isa clearly communicated and engages everyone involved. The assessment tools you use should be tailored to fit what your business goals and success drivers.
I’ve used the 9-box grid in a few organisations and think it still has a lot of validity to provide a structured approach, although it can easily be overcomplicated and too rigid. I have found people managers like rules to fall back on, so they know they are not doing the wrong thing.
With potential assessments and succession planning, there it isn’t an exact science. It needs good management judgement. If your managers rely too much on the structure of something like the 9-box, then you can often get the wrong result.
I’ve used simpler structures in organisations too, but these weren’t a silver bullet.
I still found the key success factor was the manager’s skill for understanding their people’s drive and ability, and how this potential is a fit for critical roles in the organisation. This requires quality conversations, keen observation, and thoughtful assessment, no matter which tools or processes you use.
My advice is to identify the structure and process that best align with your business goals and culture. Once you have that, invest in training your managers to effectively review and assess potential.
We have a lot of tools and learning content in our membership library that can help:
- Succession planning templates for senior teams and for broader use in the organisation around critical roles.
- Models for assessing potential and alternatives to the 9-box grid to use in your processes.
- Guidance on defining and mapping critical roles for your succession plan.
- Guidance on development planning for different levels of potential and performance.
- Bitesize learning modules on talent management strategy, succession planning, reviewing potential, aligning high potentials to critical roles, defining and mapping talent to critical roles and developing talent at all levels of your organisation.
There are new resources coming over this week and next too, focussed on how to design and implement a talent deal for your organisation, leadership and management capability models, talent pool development ideas and much more. Also, we have some fantastic events coming up for those looking at their succession planning. Join us to discuss:
- Different Approaches to Revolutionise your Succession Planning with Dr Ines Wichert
- How to Make Your Early Talent Programmes Successful with Catherine Serusclat
- Developing Leadership and Talent in Operational Environments with Vince Hannant
Not forgetting the questions on how you demonstrate value and ROI 📈
It’s so important to track relevant data linked to your succession and talent management.
Can you show your business things like:
- How many promotions or moves are you seeing from your talent pools compared to your general population?
- What the retention rate comparison is for those identified as having potential or actively supported on your succession plan?
- How your talent pools, from early talent through to senior, map to your critical roles and capabilities?
- How performance compares when you have high potentials in critical roles?
I had a great interview with Douglas Tilston, Head of People Analytics at Reckitt, for our Talent Optimisation Insight Report (available here). I worked with Doug previously and his support on data and analytics was invaluable to show the impact of our talent management efforts. He talks about combining people and performance data to drive better decision making at both organisational and individual people manager levels.
Our members can watch this here.
They can also request new content development, which is always exciting to work on because it directly aligns with their priorities and helps them deliver outstanding service. Plus, they receive a complimentary consultancy hour to address any of their people-related priorities or challenges. These are just a few of the benefits that come with their membership.
Finally, a reminder we are doing some research into AI Adoption in Learning and Development. Give your views here . We’ll be sharing our insight on this in September with some ideas on how you can integrate AI into your talent development approaches.
It feels great to be giving our members lots of support in areas that are a top priority for them.
Visit thetalentlabs.com or book an appointment with one of our fabulous Talent Solutions Managers to discuss: Christos Allen, Jemma Wilkinson, Sarah Lane, Sukhy Carey.
Enjoy the rest of your week.
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