Identifying high potential talent

It should be clear why organisations would like to work with potential and what outcomes they expect. If potential-related initiatives are not being instrumented carefully, negative implications can easily outweigh benefits.

It’s also important to consider the population that will be examined. For example, will it focus on a specific level or involve different levels? If people are going to be assessed, will the process be open to everyone or to a few pre-selected individuals? Organisations also need to ensure that they understand their own organisational context, what great looks like at the company today and what it will look like in the future.

Potential cannot be assessed or measured, instead the characteristics to be measured will need to be defined in advance. In order to do so, organisations need to identify “potential for what?” It also needs to be considered how many tools and methods will be used for this purpose.

What we do when we work with potential is to aim for the best possible estimation, and in order to increase the level of our estimation, we need to take into account as many data points as possible. In a way, this is like forecasting weather; you can use thermometers, barometers and other tools, or you can just put your finger in the air.

The more tools and methods you use, the higher the level of complexity you will have to deal with, but the higher the likely level of your estimations. Ask what level of complexity the organisation is equipped to deal with, how the data will be collected and who will interpret it. Using people analytics can certainly help with this.

Intentions must be very clear about the kind of decisions that will be made and what the next steps will be. Organisations need to explore ways to ensure that they can manage the expectations of some individuals and will avoid as many of the potential-related issues mentioned above as possible.

It is important to ensure that communication is clear and transparent, not just to avoid increasing lack of trust and low perception of fairness, but also for legal reasons linked to discriminatory behaviours and use of data (GDPR).

It can also be useful to use potential assessments to assess how successful the potential-related initiatives have been. In order to do so, organisations need to consider ways to measure their effectiveness and determine if the outcomes justify the investment.

Demonstrating return on investment around potential-related initiatives is challenging mainly because of development programmes and self-fulfilling prophesies, and also because people favoured by high potential employee assessments tend to leave their companies when their high expectations are not met. Ironically, a way to evaluate how good the estimations have been is to assess people and not do anything. After a couple years, check to see if your estimations came true without intervention, and if that happened because of the individuals’ characteristics and not due to unrelated factors.