Time to Stop Pigeonholing our Leaders!

What if I told you that we still use McKinsey's tool today, introduced to the Human Resource Development space in the 1970s? This tool is used to identify and develop top talent. It is also the tool of choice to plan leadership succession inside organizations today.

You read that right; a tool unveiled ~50 years ago!

For those who guessed it as the “9-Box”, you would be 100% right. For those who do not recognize this term, the 9-box is a tool that lays out ‘potential’ on one axis and ‘performance’ on the other and segments the two dimensions into nine sections.

These are “high performance + high potential” (basically your rockstars), “medium performance + high potential” (fast follow to your rockstars), “low performance + high potential” (who are these people? more to come on this later), “high performance + medium potential” (talent that needs development and motivation), “medium performance + medium potential” (the graveyard of outstanding leadership!), “low performance + medium potential” (in need of some serious conversation), “high performance + low potential” (“technical experts”), “medium performance + low potential” (in need of some serious discussion on steroids) and “low performance + low potential” (why do we even have folks who qualify to be placed in this box?)

The #1 problem with the 9-box is that it is impossible to distinguish between ‘performance’ and ‘potential.’ They are inextricably linked, aren’t they? Let us get real for a second; have you ever seen someone who is a poor performer pegged as having high potential? Worse, the 9-box is often used to ‘label’ high performers with perceived low potential as “technical experts,” pigeonholing much?

Another problem is the ‘middle-box.’ Yes, the one where we have ‘medium performers’ with ‘medium potential.’ This box, I have often said, is where outstanding leadership potential goes to die! This box typically has the most significant number of associates in any organization. Do you think that is a coincidence? Nope, it is by design because you can only place “so many” associates in the top-3 boxes of the 9-box, i.e., those that organizations think are ‘rockstars,’ those closely following these ‘rockstars’ and talent that needs development and motivation.

The 9-box does have its advantages as it does create an aperture in organizations with outstanding and conscientious talent management practices to help leadership discuss, assess, and calibrate associates’ strengths and weaknesses. However, these still do not outweigh the disadvantages of using the 9-box because there is no ‘black and white’ way of measuring potential, and it relies heavily on the manager’s judgment calls and biases. This is especially problematic and highly unreliable where decision-makers inside organizations have memories of elephants when it comes to perceptions regarding employee potential.

Evaluating talent on any given day is extremely hard and complex. However, introducing a ‘template’ and another annual ‘check-the-box’ tool and exercise to the mix causes much more damage than it helps. Let me lay out the broader context of where organizations were in the 1960s and 70s and what the preoccupation of leadership development was then compared to what it is and ought to be today.

In the 60s and 70s, there was much preoccupation with the ‘situational’ theories of leadership. The emphasis was on training leaders to fit their leadership style to the situation's needs. The current landscape emphasizes the leader’s ability to develop, engage and inspire to build high-performing teams. To “develop,” “engage,” and “inspire,” the leader must have the capability and capacity to share decision-making via developing their team’s decision-making chops. Leaders need to be equipped to meet the needs of a fragmented competitive landscape where frontline associates are making more and more decisions as the speed to act is not a choice anymore. In this context, the continued use of the 9-box and the fact that it was introduced in the 70s cause cognitive dissonance for me.

This calls for a new day in leadership development; the need of the hour is modern leadership. When leaders and their teams have more frequent and critical discussions about performance and development, it drives higher engagement and, in turn, more elevated performance levels. This is the only accurate measure of a leader’s potential. Not judgment call-based processes in conference rooms at headquarters.

It is time to retire the annual 9-box exercise and replace it with a more frequent cadence to collect and analyze data. Something that genuinely measures a leader’s ability to build capability and capacity for themselves and their teams and, in turn, sustainably grow their businesses. Time to put in place an approach that collects leader capability and capacity data and analyzes it in literally minutes (clocking just under 10 minutes right now!) to activate a decision engine to deliver evidence-based, prescriptive leadership interventions that can be tied to driving top-line and bottom-line business metrics.

The more we leverage this capability, the less we will need an annual, feel-good, ‘check the box exercise unveiled ~50 years ago.

Agree? If so, please share your thoughts and comments. Please do so even if you disagree 😊!