In a tightly packed conference room executives debate who the next line of leaders are going to be. A number of stories are narrated and a number of documents are churned. What's evident is the process, the discussion and the intense reflection. At the end of the review some decisions are arrived at and the review comes to a close.
While the talent review is a common process and there is little room for diversity of creativity there, success of talent reviews as a part of the talent management process itself is rare. Completion of talent review however is construed as success. That rarely is the case.
So what makes the talent reviews fail? Let's look at the most common derailers of the talent reviews in the corporate:
Conjecture
No matter how many documents are presented in the review, if all of them are manager's estimate or if they are all subjective speculation, talent review is bound to fail. Objective data however difficult must be collected. Common practices are to use a psychometric assessment, 360 degree feedback, behvaioural interview assessment, and performance data depending on roles/KRAs.
In absence of objective data, bias takes over and managers and executives alike tend to favour successful candidates or safe candidates. A clone effect also takes over where in managers who are most like the executives present in the review are favoured and receive positive hearing. A well known fact is that managers are poor judges of individual potential.
Poor Facilitation
All said and done, no culture or company for that matter is perfect and there is always some room for politics and biases. There is little on can do beyond a point. Therefore your best bet is to have an executive or better still an expert process facilitator do the job of facilitation for you. Granted that it may seem costly and depending on culture, a little paranoid, but it has great advantages as well.
The facilitator adds to the trust which is counter intuitive but true. This works well because facilitator is seemed impartial and can ask questions that internal participants may shy away from due to power equations. An external facilitator if chosen well, can have many benefits.
Unclear Strategy
Its common to have talent management programmes but very few have the returns one hopes for. And the major problem is the absence of talent strategy as well as alignment, thereof. A well thought of strategy will articulate, why talent review needs to be done, what need will it meet in a particular organization and how will it be done to deliver that advantage. Strategy must take into account considerations like attrition, talent availability in market, talent availability in house, risk in critical roles, engagement levels, readiness levels, talent mobility and diversity.
A clear strategy will not only help observe and ensure returns but will also save a lot of money and time. In absence, organization struggles to identify the real talent, retain high potential employees and eventually money spent on them goes waste.
There are many other things to watch out for, but in my conversations with talent managers, these three have come across as the biggest problems of talent reviews. For the review to work these three problem areas must be fixed without doubt.