Assessing & Developing High Potentials 2015

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Potential is the next wave of talent-spotting. Companies need to focus less on people’s competencies when filling a job and more on the qualities that will let them pivot with the times. That’s especially critical when picking someone for a leadership role. The world is simply too fickle and fast-moving these days to know what any job will require. You have to start with the right mindset, the skills that make you successful today might not be so important tomorrow.

Research suggests that more than two-thirds of companies are misidentifying their high-potential employees jeopardizing long-term corporate performance. This failure drives true HiPos—those who demonstrate the attributes to be successful future leaders—to pursue positions with potentially competitive organizations willing to invest in their development. In order to keep top talent in house and maximize bottom-line results, companies must re-evaluate and reinvigorate their HiPo programs. Precise identification of high potentials requires applying a consistent language of talent, and properly calibrating the system to measure it.

High-potential employees are seen as almost twice as valuable to their organizations as employees who are not high-potentials. That is easy to understand when you look at the relationship between leadership bench strength and organizational performance. Organizations with stronger leadership bench strength show double the revenue and profit growth of organizations with weaker bench strength. These levels of performance are the promise that drives investment in high-potential programs.

Leadership remains the top human capital concern and the largest “readiness gap”. Many organizations cite the need to develop leaders faster, globalize leadership programs, and build deeper bench strength. To this end, organizations are putting their money where their mouths are (so to speak), with leadership development spending up from