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How are you connecting readiness and potential?

Would you choose a ready-now candidate to fill a role over one that the organization views as having higher potential? Sometimes the answer is yes; it can be a matter of fit and the person having the right talent and capabilities at the right time.

Consider suitability when you think of promoting someone to the next role.

Fit is everything. I have seen great talent (and those thought of as high potential) move to a new role and not do well. In many organizations there is a tendency to blame the person first if they do not immediately work out in a role—one can go from hero to bum in a nanosecond.

All of a sudden your great high potential, the on-the-retention-list, can’t-ever-lose-them person is the center of a discussion on how to package them out. I believe organizations have the responsibility to set someone up for success. Whether the candidate is internal or external, having a plan to help make them successful is really critical to achieving that success. Even if someone has been with the organization they will need a plan that sets them up to succeed in the new role.

Bosses change, business conditions change, team size and scope change, markets move at unprecedented speeds—and all can bring significant challenges to a new leader. There’s an adage that, when moving someone to a new role, it’s best to only change two things at a time (so the boss and the geography, or the team and the business, or the customers and the line of business).

This is theoretically an interesting notion, but today, in the current age of disruption, highly unlikely. It is rare to only have two things change at once, and leaders not only have to self-manage through those changes, but they also have to lead others through them.

How do you connect performance and potential?

I have been in many discussions over the years where the focus has been on developing the high-potential talent, yet there has been little mention of what those candidates have actually delivered in their previous roles. I have always found this to be an odd phenomenon, especially given the fact that when someone fails in a role, they generally don’t get removed because of potential; rather, it is a lack of performance that is noticed.

All you have to do is pick up a newspaper or listen to CNN to hear the latest story. On May 22, 2017, Ford Motor Company removed Mark Fields, their then CEO, who over a three-year period had presided over a 40% decline in share price. At the time of the transition, William C. Ford Jr. said that “extraordinary times require transformational leadership, and that’s what Jim (Hackett) has been his entire career.”

It is great to have a focus on developing high-potential talent, but you also have to track performance; how do people perform in disruptive situations? Can they thrive in environments of unpredictability and uncertainty? Can they deliver on their business plans and remake the organization if needed? How have they performed over time? In the article “Discovering how Future Leaders Think,” Barry Conchie outlines key questions that define qualities of leaders. When it comes to performance:

He adds questions about challenging experience:

• How have you stretched performance goals for your organization, division, or team recently? Why did you do this? What results do you expect?
• What are the three main performance goals on your agenda?

Performance and accountability start at the top. When developing your talent pools and pipelines, differentiate based on performance.

Are people learning agile?

Perhaps the simplest definition of learning agility is having one experience or set of experiences in a particular situation and being able to transfer the learning into other situations and experiences. Here’s how the Center for Creative Leadership defines learning agility:

It’s clear that learning agility is part of any successful leader’s repertoire. The willingness and ability to learn from experience not only influence the extent to which we grow as individuals, but also how we are perceived by others. Ultimately, our ability to continuously learn and adapt will determine the extent to which we thrive in today’s turbulent times.”

Learning About Learning Agility, Center for Creative Leadership, April 2012

Further, the Center for Creative Leadership offers these characteristics of learning agile people:

• Innovating:
  They are not afraid to challenge the status quo.
• Performing:
  They remain calm in the face of difficulty.
• Reflecting:
  They take time to reflect on their experiences.
• Risking:
  They purposefully put themselves in challenging situations.
• Defending:
  They are simply open to learning and resist the temptation to become defensive in the face of adversity.

Differentiators of learning agility also include resilience—it isn’t that we want people who never face a tough situation or reach a bad result; rather, what is important is what they did with it; how they recovered; how they moved on; how they instilled confidence in the organization and in their people.

Look at the relationship between skills, knowledge, capability, and capacity.

Whether organizations use competencies, or career capabilities, or work levels, or job levels, there needs to be a way to identify what someone knows, what they can do, how well they will do it, and how much they can do. Often, companies employ competency models that define the knowledge and skills needed at each level of the organization.

There are numerous competency assessment models in the market today, along with organizations that have designed homegrown versions that suit their particular needs. What knowledge, skills, personal characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors define leadership and desired performance in your organization? What does it look like when people exhibit those competencies? Get specific on behaviors and what they look like in your organization. A good way to communicate your competency model is to answer these questions: What is it that defines how we work together and the critical capabilities needed to succeed in the organization? What does it look like when people demonstrate those competencies? What are the outcomes and results? Be clear and concise about what is expected and what it is you actually want people to do.

Placing your big bets on talent.

At the end of the day, when you choose to select an individual for a role you are placing a bet, hoping they are the right choice for the job. I once worked with a CFO who said, “When we place these bets on people, I want to make sure the house odds are in my favor.” How can you do that? Can you ensure you are making the right choice? The Hay group (2007) outlined three critical questions when determining if a candidate is ready for a next role. I love their language about this and wanted to share their insight:

Whether organizations are assessing short-term suitability or long-term potential, there are three questions that must be asked:

• Are they ready?
  Does the person have the hard skills, knowledge, and experience required for the role into which they will be moved? Developed through education, training, and career experience, readiness is necessary for achieving effective performance. This is sometimes referred to as being “résumé-ready” because much of this kind of readiness can be evaluated through a good résumé or career history.
• Are they willing?
  Does the person want to rise in the organization? Can the organization adapt to the person’s needs? Given the ever-increasing pace of corporate life and rising standards of living, people are increasingly choosing to balance their work and life, rather than single-mindedly pursuing careers. This issue has implications for both the individual and the organization.
• Are they able?
  Does the person possess the soft characteristics, the underlying personal traits required by the specific role or organization? Some of these are the inherent qualities of the individual, while others can be developed through career experience and coaching. It is these deeper, more personal factors that provide the foundation for performance at a superior level.

What does it mean to be ready-now talent?

My question has always been, “Ready for what?” Ready now depends on a lot of factors and not just the time in the current role (which suggests that if someone has been in their current role for a number of years they are by default ready for a new assignment). Ask yourself: Is the candidate ready for this situation? This level of complexity? This business challenge? This leader? This team? This set of performance goals?

I have known Barry Conchie for a number of years. He is an author and industry thought leader in the area of leadership assessment and succession, and as we were talking about the chemistry of high performance, our conversation migrated to a discussion of the ready-now designation often used in talent planning, high-potential succession reviews, and general talent reviews. He has a great perspective on the notion of what it means to be ready now. I hope you find it to be insightful and thought-provoking.