How to Identify High Potential Talents for Succession Planning

Succession Planning

The Key: Effective Assessment, Identification & Development of High Potentials 

“85% of North American and Asian companies felt they did not have enough qualified successors in the pipeline for key leadership positions” 

(Harvard, 2013)

“Nearly 40% of internal job moves made by people identified by their companies as “high potentials” end in failure.”

(Harvard Business Review, 2010)

It became clear that proper assessment, identification and development of high potentials (HiPo’s) is key to best-in-class leadership development. Most companies identify HiPo’s by looking at performance ratings of last 2-3 years. 

A study showed that only 30% of high performers are also high potentials while 93% of HiPo’s are high performers.

HiPo’s are defined as people who have the willingness and ability to LEARN new competencies to perform in new or first-time conditions. Learners are resilient, non-defensive and have a strong need for growth.

THE SOLUTION:

In a study in AT&T, researchers, found that low potentials were often more successful if they had developmental opportunities and developmental bosses. This showed learning agility can be developed in right environment. 

The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), in research led by Dr. Michael Lombardo, identified below factors in learning agile people:

• People Agility – Skilled communicator who can work with a diverse group of people;
• Results Agility – Inspires people to work together to deliver results in challenging first-time situations;
• Mental Agility – ability to examine problems in unique and unusual ways;
• Change Agility – Curious, likes to experiment & comfortable with change;
• Self-Awareness – Extent to which an individual knows his/her true strengths & weaknesses.

Dr. Lombardo went on to co-found Lominger with Robert Eichinger, who has 40+ year of experience working in or with Fortune 500 companies. Together, they created assessment and development tools to help companies assess and develop learning agility in employees. (Lominger is now part of the Korn Ferry Hay Group).

The purpose of this workshop is to help senior leadership learn how to address the common challenge of effectively assessing and identifying the right employees to develop future leaders. We will leverage case studies to help participants learn to be more learning agile themselves. And help them develop an action plan to leverage the 70:20:10 development model by CCL to develop their own succession candidates once assessed and identified.

INTENDED AUDIENCE

C-level managers, Senior Managers and functional heads of organizations

 Participants will:

• Understand what learning agility is and how it affects performance and success;
• Assess a potential leader for learning agility;
• Learn how their organizations can support the development of learning agility;
• Develop their own grasp of competencies they need to work on in each of the five factors to be more learning agile;
• Develop an action plan to enable effective succession planning in respective companies

WORKSHOP CONTENT

• Introduction to Learning Agility
• The 5 Factors and 27 Dimensions of Learning Agility
• Learning to assess Learning Agility
• How to build a work environment that supports the development of learning agility
• Exercises & Case Studies of Agility in Action
• Team Debriefing & Learning Insights
• Action Plan to Enable Effective Succession Planning