What is the ideal pace of high potential talent development?
Talent and succession readiness estimation remains a constant challenge for organisations. Apart from the complex interplay of experience, future required competencies and learning agility, the individual’s readiness and pace of growth towards increased complexity also needs to be taken into account. Using the MCPA assessment of capability potential enables a prediction of when individuals are likely to be ready for which themes of work complexity. This ensures that high potential individuals are not promoted at an impossible pace, and also ensures that individuals with faster growth rates are matched to accelerated development activities.
Bioss SA recently assisted a client with gaining a better understanding of the individual capability growth rates within their high potential talent pool. This consisted of:
- Reviewing role profiles that were considered as “next moves” for high talent individuals and determining the complexity requirement of these roles
- Facilitating MCPA interviews with high potential individuals (gauged on the basis of performance and potential ratings)
- Matching the organisation readiness estimate (for next move) to the predictions of the MCPA growth curves
Figure 1 below illustrates the extent to which the indicated capability growth rate matched the current organisational readiness estimate:
Figure 1: Graph depicting the match between capability growth of candidates and the estimated readiness categories provided by the organisation.
Most of the high potential candidates evidenced readiness for increased complexity in the short to medium-term. This aligned well with the organisation’s internal assessment and inclusion into the talent pool. The organisation was therefore well positioned to fully realise the benefits of flow in the form of engagement, productivity and performance, given that other requirements are also met. However, 32% of the talent pool displayed potential readiness sooner than expected. These individuals had potentially outgrown their current roles and represented a retention risk should their near to medium term future not provide for greater complexity. In addition, 5% of the talent pool would potentially be overpromoted in terms of the complexity of the future roles they had been identified for.
This exercise enabled the organisation to identify high potential individuals where the envisaged readiness timing was later than the capability growth of some individuals. It therefore enabled prioritisation and adjustment of individual readiness estimates as part of the overall high potential talent development process, and a better match of the timing and pace of high potential talent development.