Getting From a Tight Talent Market to Robust Talent Pipelines

Where is the talent going to come from to fuel growth, to take advantage of new opportunities, and to innovate?

If talent availability externally is exceptionally tight, strategies have to include robust plans and pathways to develop and grow your successors internally. Ideally, a mix of build and buy strategies is optimal and affords the most flexibility for organizations looking to fill key roles.

As an experienced HCM practitioner, I have had to prepare for a board review or organization review of talent in many organizations. One of the most important tasks of a board is to ensure the continuity of the enterprise in the midst of management change, so the annual succession or talent review is a critical conversation that should include the depth and breadth of talent in the organization. There is always some debate as to how far down in the organization a board review should go—it is two down from the C-level? The top 200 jobs? The top 50 jobs? Is it for all ready-now or ready-in-one-to-three-years candidates? I have done all of the above in response to the needs of different organizations. I have worked with leaders to put together the best view possible of their current slates of high-potential talent for their organizations’ most critical roles.

A defining question when taking your succession plan to the board (or when you are preparing for a C-level review) is: How real is your bench chart and succession plan? I pose this particular question because there's a natural tendency to fill in every space on a bench chart so there are not too many gaps. It's hard, although in some cases necessary and warranted, to show key roles with no real successors and a very sparse or non-existent bench. How do you know if your organization has a phantom bench? Ask yourself: If we had to fill that key role tomorrow, would we choose people on the bench, talent pool, or anyone in our succession plan?

If the answer is “no,” then it is likely that you would go outside to fill that role—and, more critically, your talent pipelines may quite possibly not be what you represent them to be, or hope they are. I have seen many a bench chart where, if the incumbent were to leave tomorrow, no one in the ready-now or one-to-three-year category would get the job, and everyone knows it. It is a dangerous practice to fill in the blanks for the sake of having a name in the box; it presents a reality that is neither practical nor actionable.

Where do you begin with creating the real succession plan for your most senior roles and developing your high-potential talent?

  1. Know your business strategy and how your talent strategy will deliver the growth and capabilities necessary to deliver the business plan. At the very minimum, you want to have the right people, in the right job, to sustain and grow the business.
  2. Decide what roles you want to include—is it VP and above? I recommend that you include at least the most critical jobs. Include roles that are revenue-generating and for a board talent review, at minimum you should go two down from the top jobs and highlight a talent pool as successors for those roles. Each division will want to do their version of this focusing on critical roles and indicating how their division talent strategies roll up to the enterprise strategy.
  3. Be clear about where you have a strong bench, and conversely, no bench at all. It is easier developing people for the real plan than being caught off guard if you need to fill a senior role in response to an unexpected resignation or exit.
  4. Create talent pools as opposed to just one successor for each job. This makes much more sense than a narrow view of the one right successor for each role. Context matters; the climate and business conditions affect your candidate choice at a particular time. Developing multiple candidates for senior roles gives you flexibility to consider all of the dimensions of fit for a particular role. Timing is everything—you may have a great person at the wrong time. In this talent market you don’t often have the luxury of several people in the market that would be perfect for a particular role, so it is good to ask, “What is it we need now in this particular role or business situation, and what will we need in the future?” Look at what is the best match for the challenges you are facing.
Introduction Defining High Potential
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