Unfortunately, (or should it be thankfully?) I have never been part of an organization that did any kind of potential assessment. There was this one organization where your manager and his manager were supposed to do a "scaling call" for you for the succession plan of the business. Which, if you see it, was another way of assessing potential. So people would be ranked one of the four options, Ready to be Promoted, Develop in Place, Continue in Place and Move Out. In decreasing order of desirability.
However what this organization did well was to put the onus on to the manager. If you as an assessee went for three quarter as "Ready to be Promoted" and yet were not promoted, your manager was hauled up over the coals to explain why not?
If you spent two quarters as a Develop in Place and were not yet "Ready to be Promoted" your manager was questioned again.
So organizations need to get a fix on what kind of potential they are assessing for. As Prasad says:
The answers include 'potential to be effective in a particular position', 'potential to be effective in a job family', 'potential to take up leadership positions in the company' etc. Logically, this should lead to the creation of a capability framework that details the requirements to be effective in the job/job family/leadership positions that we are taking about. The potential assessment has to be done with respect to these requisite capabilities. Depending on the nature of the particular capability the method for assessing it can be chosen keeping in mind the organization constraints/context specific factors. In many cases the employees might not have had an opportunity to demonstrate the requisite capabilities (for the future/target job) in their current/previous jobs. This would call for some sort of simulation, similar to those used in assessment centres. For some aspects of particular capabilities that are close to work styles/ personality attributes some sort of psychometric testing could also be useful. Managerial judgement (especially if it is based on in-depth discussion by a group of managers who have had significant amount work related interaction with the employee) and 360 degree feedback are useful to supplement the data from assessment centres/from other assessment tools particularly from a data interpretation/'reality testing' point of view.
Unfortunately organizations and their HR people are usually unable to plan so far ahead. In times of tremendous change sometimes looking for potential that is framed by what worked in the past will undo chances of success in the future.
So what kind of potential are you assessing your existing employees or even new employees for?
Gautam,
ReplyDeleteThe problem with nearly all succession planning is that it has no scientific theory base and, therefore, no universal measures or common language. Using a work levels theory base, aka stratified systems theory aka requisite organization, makes assessing potential relatively straightforward because it provides universal measures and a common language.
When I work with clients to help their line managers assess potential, we are looking for level of cognitive capacity to solve problems, aka current potential capability.
A little on the theory - work can be divided into discreet levels of complexity (just as H2O can exist as ice, water, or steam). Using a universal measurement system, time span of discretion, all jobs can be classified by level. Each level of work calls for a specific level of cognitive capacity, aka complexity of information processing.
So when we assess potential, we are looking at the level at which a person can currently solve problems, or at what level of the organization are they currently suited to work. Then, we look at the level of their current role. If it's a match, great.
If they have greater potential than the role, the manager-once-removed (who is accountable for talent development of his people two levels down) needs to look to get the person promoted. This might require filling any skill or experience gaps that would allow for this person to assume a role that matches their current cognitive capacity.
When a person has cognitive capacity below that required of their current role, that person should be redeployed into a lower level role.
Cognitive capacity matures throughout our lifetimes. If you know a person's current capacity and age, you can predict their future potential as well. So long term development planning is possible.
Regards,
Michelle Malay Carter
Thanks Gautam.
ReplyDeleteI agree that defining specific courses of action for each talent classification and making the managers responsible for carrying out the action points in a time bound manner is a good step. This would ensure that the organization and the managers are serious about talent management.
In a best case scenario, this could encourage the organization/ managers to make the potential assessment/talent classification process more accurate/ valid. However if this does not happen, we could have situations where 'wrong' assessments/ talent classifications take place, and the managers end up 'ensuring completion of wrong courses of action in a time bound manner'. I have seen that managers are often reluctant to change their assessment of someone's potential (even when there is evidence to the contrary), because that would indirectly mean that their initial judgment was wrong.
I have heard that in some partnership firms the partners often make a judgment about whether a new hire is 'partner material' within 1-2 years of the date of joining of the new hire. Since many partners take great pride in their judgment, they might not use any other process/ tool other than 'judgement'. Quite often these judgments' turn out to be true. Of course, we don't know whether this happens mainly because of the quality of judgment (may be some sort of 'thin slicing' takes place) or this happens mainly because of 'Pygmalion effect' ('partner-expectancy effect' in this context). It is however commonly seen that though these judgments are kept confidential, those who have been judged to be 'partner material' find that good things start happening to them (e.g. allocation to prestigious projects, opportunity to work with the partners closely, allocation to training programs etc.) where as the others (who ended up on the wrong side of the partner judgment) find themselves to be less fortunate when it comes to these developmental opportunities.