Think about it – if we are thinking ahead in terms of talent development and management, then we’ll be prepared for change with resources at the ready (to a degree, of course). Take the 9 box, for example. If your company consistently rates and reviews top talent, you benefit in a couple of ways. First, you can easily see where you have gaps that you need to fill. That knowledge alerts you to start looking for talent to add to your bench. Second, you can see who needs talent development in order to be ready for that next opportunity. If someone’s a low-performer, could training or coaching help? If you’ve got a high-performer in their current specialty, is it time to move them into a different position to give them a broader view of the organization and groom them to be a successor?

Speaking of successors…your succession and replacement planning duties are critical to the ABP credo. By investing the time and energy to identify and develop a strong bench of talented candidates for key positions, you (and a prepared candidate) are ready to fill that critical position as soon as it opens up. Be sure to make those plans at least two or even better, three, candidates deep to keep your plan in place even if your top succession candidate unexpectedly becomes unavailable.

Strategically speaking, it’s also important for HR to know where the organization is headed so that they can support those future goals with the necessary talent. When we are a part of conversations regarding new product lines, headquarters relocation, outsourcing, etc, we have the chance to keep both individuals and the larger workforce population ready. You’ll know that a new Product Marketing Manager will be necessary to head up that new line in the not too distant future. And you can share with the relocation committee important workforce considerations – such as nearby colleges that could feed the labor pool. I hope to see more organizations recognizing the value of HR input ahead of the game and including us in more of those meetings.

Meanwhile, remember this mantra: Always. Be. Planning.

Cheers,

Lois

Most interviewing cycles have several phases.  A typical one would have you go through a screening interview with someone in HR, followed by a more in depth interview with the hiring manager, and then possibly talking to his or her boss, followed by conversations with other specialists in the company.  The interviewer in each scenario will have a series of questions that you will, of course, need to be prepared for, but I find that the best candidates distinguish themselves when they prepare questions to ask me.  It is particularly effective if they can introduce some idea of a process or methodology that could help me or my company.   As a tip, next time you’re at this point in an interview try asking “What qualities do you or your company look for when evaluating high potential employees?”

The chances are that the hiring manager will struggle a little to answer that question, and that’s your opening.  If there is a board somewhere, ask permission and go draw a nine-box on it demonstrating how you use the tool to evaluate yourself.  The manager may have heard of a nine-box, but it is likely he or she never used it with any regularity.  This gives you the chance to visually paint a flattering picture of yourself while introducing a useful scoring tool to the manager to run his organization.  I can almost guarantee that he or she will remember you after the interview.

The reason the nine-box is effective is that strong leaders tend to be more visual than oral, so any chance you get to leave an imprint on their mind will likely leave you with a leg up on the competition.   Good hunting!

But, why should we stop there?  Aquire is implementing some great creative usage in the 9 box to help solve many business and talent-driven decisions.  I bet you would love to see performance rating on one axis and the scale of salary or raise % within a 9 box.  It allows people to fall directly into the 9 box and you can see the outliers during your bonus planning.  It is very powerful.

Another use of the traditional potential by performance 9 box view is during bonus assignments and raise awards. This has increased management’s satisfaction with the compensation process.  The managers feel better about the fairness and the distribution of funds, when they can visualize the value distribution of their key players.

A workforce analyst is diagnosing risk for retirement pain points by reviewing age by tenure on the matrix.  When you need to see comparative details to a group of people, the visualization of the distribution is very powerful and makes the data very easy to understand.

The 9-box is powerful and its power is magnified when you can compare, side by side, the individuals in any area of the 9 box or select individuals.  Multiply the power again when you can transfer the visualization of the 9 box content in a color coded map in the org chart.  NOW, you have the power to see the applicable information in the context of the hierarchy structure of the organization and the information has real meaning.

Your planning is stronger.  Your decision making is more confident.  Your processes have a reduction in risk, when you can really see the information you need in an impactful view.  So to really deliver value to your management, I ask…What’s in your 9-box?

Cheers,

Lois

Succession planning discussions aren’t limited to HR industry magazines and websites anymore – just Google search “Yankees succession plan” and you’ll get a host of hits from a wide range of sources. Clearly this is more than just buzz – it’s top of mind in the business community, as I believe it should be. A sound succession plan keeps organizations on the path to success.

So why do we hesitate to create that crucial blueprint? Confusion? Dread? Lack of resources and tools? Too many of us get bogged down in the concept of managing the process instead of focusing on the plan itself.

This is a subject that I’ve been tackling head on lately. So, I thought I’d put all of our recent succession planning resources here. I hope you enjoy!

The Fort Worth Business Press recently published my article Succession Planning Needed to Safeguard Future that addresses solutions to the roadblocks many organizations throw in the way of succession planning.

I also blogged about it – Five Succession Planning Steps: Don’t make it harder than it is!, It must have struck a chord, because that entry was picked up and reposted on the Entrepreneurs’ Organization website – a group of more than 7,300 business owners in 42 countries dedicated to sharing business and leadership knowledge.

So now Aquire has developed another resource to help break down the process into manageable steps: Safeguard the Future with Succession Planning – a short presentation that breaks down the process into five easy steps. It’s free to watch on demand with no registration required. What’s holding you back from succession planning? I’d love to know!

Cheers,

Lois

Bring up the subject of succession planning and most HR and other executives shudder. These highly intelligent, capable people often labor under the impression that succession planning is such a complicated, multi-step process that they are already too far behind to even begin.

Sound familiar? While succession planning is vital to your company’s future, it doesn’t have to be your nemesis. With the right plan and the right tools it can be accomplished.

As I mentioned in my article in the Fort Worth Business Press, you must consider these five succession planning steps to get you started:

1. Identify the critical positions in your company. There are the obvious C-level players, but also consider any positions that you’ve filled in the last two years. If you’ve hired anyone during this lackluster economy, it was probably for a critical role.
2. Determine what skills people in those positions need. Doing this can be as basic identifying five top talents that a candidate has, then matching those to a position requiring some or all of those skills.
3. Find and assess potential successors. Even if you don’t have a formal competency model in place, you can jumpstart your initiative by identifying the most obvious candidates. Doing so will help you understand you create a working process.
4. Involve managers and leaders at all levels throughout the company. They often know where the hidden talent lies outside the “inner circle” or the excellent qualifications of an underemployed individual.
5. Commit to developing internal talent and monitoring their progress. It’s more cost effective to promote from within and often results in better leadership.

But most of all, take advantage of the tools that are available to help you create

and maintain successful succession planning systems. Retire the manual org charts, hand-colored spreadsheets and email round-robin. We created OrgPublisher Premier and OrgPublisher Succession Module to make the succession planning process more manageable so that you can concentrate on selecting the right candidates who will provide the best future for your organization.

Cheers,

Lois

So, for this round of hiring, we’re now using the 9-Box matrix, from our own Succession Planning software, to plot candidates. The traditional axes of the 9-Box are Performance and Potential. That, at least in Succession Planning best practices, is the way to find the candidates most suited for moving up the corporate ladder.

Using the 9 Box for hiring takes a little different approach, but our software can still handle the requirements. In this hiring situation, I can plot potential for leadership on one axis and cultural fit on the other, then rank the candidates in their various groupings. A technical manager is also using the 9 Box for their hiring, plotting skills matches on one axis and cultural fit on another. The potential is limitless, and brings the focus of the hiring manager onto the top two most important factors they consider for hiring.

The screening recruiter can first plot the candidates prior to the manager’s interviews, and then the manager can reorganize and re-rank people after the interviews. There are many, many choices involved in the hiring process. We have found this to be one great way to get a laser-focus and common communication schema in front of all decision makers during the hiring process.

Our customers are the buyers of HR technology and business workforce analytics software. They’re hyper-aware of their vendors because they, themselves, are in the people business. We provide great customer service, and our customers deserve it. Only the best candidates can make the cut. So, I’m glad we can use our very own Succession Planning software in a new way. It definitely increases our ROI.

Cheers,
Lois

But now I’ve found my current succession planning winner for using the traditional high potential and high performance axis. A company realized that so few managers were willing to put their employees in a low potential column, especially if they were good employees or high performers. The company knew they had a problem. So they changed the labels.

During the next review process they changed the “Low” potential label to “Well Placed.” They changed the “Medium” potential label to “Expandable.” They left the “High Potential” label as “High.” Managers were then much more willing to place people honestly without feeling the ranking was degrading. Many more employees moved to squares further left in the grid.

In the sample below, the new labels are shown on the bottom axis circled in red.

That is an ingenious work-around of existing tools to get the results you need. Will you try it? Do you have tips on 9-Box usage? I’d love to see them.

Cheers,
Lois

Now the trend is moving toward succession planning or replacement planning for the entire organization. This means we need to become familiar with the terms and tools available. One of the more common questions I get asked is “What is a 9-Box that I keep hearing about?” A 9-Box is a grid with which you plot employees based on their performance ranking and their potential for advancement (see graphic). It is a little like the magic quadrant that analysts use to illustrate different rankings for comparison.

MYTH TO BE BUSTED: Not every quality employee is a High Potential, High Performer employee. Yes, quality employees should be performing high. But they may not have the potential for promotion up through management. Lacking the potential to move up to management or to be an executive is not a requirement for a stellar employee with huge value to the organization. Specialists and experts in their field may not desire to manage people, but yield great results in their position. Moving ‘up’ may require re-location and that might not be in the family or life plan of an employee. Do not judge less than high potential people as anything other than not interested or ready for a move up the corporate org chart.

The traditional 9-Box should be used to focus the process of assigning successors because the individuals in the upper right quadrant have been identified as people with the potential of moving up. If your organization has gone through a formal process of identifying high potentials you may wish to begin the initiative or address the 9-Box process with management as they assess each team for successors. We are seeing some very creative uses for the 9-Box that are different than the traditional and not using the same data on the axis. If you want to learn more, let me know.

Cheers,
Lois