What do High Potentials have the potential to do? In this article, we try to answer this seemingly simple question and realize most of us struggle with properly defining potential. Companies spend over 7 thousands dollars per high potential employee; it is of essence that we know what we are getting for our money. After reviewing literature on potential, we come to the conclusion that high potentials are employees who have the highest ability and aspiration to achieve a particular organizational goal or strategy.

1. Who Are High Potentials?
Employees Who Learn While We Are Spraying so We Can Stop Praying?
Full report here: https://pinsight.biz/blog/2/high-potentials-employees-who-learn-while-we-
are-spraying-so-we-can-stop-praying

2. Potential
We have been asking heads of talent a simple question: “What do
your high potentials have the potential for?”
Usually the answer is vague and goes along these lines: “They have
the potential to become our top executives”.

3. Spray and Pray?
Do companies spend $7,116 on average (Bersin & Associates, 2012)
on developing a high potential employee without knowing what she
has the potential to achieve?
Aren’t high potential programs pitched as strategic talent initiatives?
Could our thinking about high potentials still be flawed, even after 16
years of work in the field?

4. Hogan Assessment Approach
Hogan Assessment's Five Steps to a Better High Potential Program
seems to make perfect sense – the first step is to define what you
mean by potential.
“HiPos tend to have higher personality traits associated with
managerial performance and lower derailment traits”
Just employees with the right set of innate traits for management?
Problem solved! HiPos are born, not made.

5. What's Smarter than IQ (Korn/Ferry)
Learning agility suggested as predictor of high potential success.
Definition: “the ability to learn from experience, then apply lessons to
overcome a challenge or capitalize on a business opportunity.”
Maybe HiPos are then just employees who grow while we are
“spraying” so we can stop “praying”. But what is it that HiPos need
the agility to learn?

6. Potential:
“potential for/to do something; the possibility of
something happening or of someone doing something
in the future.”
- Oxford Dictionary

7. Human Synergistics (2010)
The 2010 article High Potential … to Do What claims that HiPos
should have the potential to exemplify behaviors prescribed by
organizational values.
They have the ability to “move the organization closer to its vision,
values, and goals.”
The secret to high potential programs being strategic is to focus
on employees’ potential to achieve organizational goals or
strategy.

8. What is “strategy”?
Janice Caplan in The Value of Talent: Promoting Talent Management
across the Organization concludes that “strategy must involve you
doing different activities from your competitors”
In other words, your competitive advantage.

9. Our new definition to test:
High potentials are employees who have the
potential, ability and aspiration to achieve a
particular organizational goal or strategy.

10. Hypothesis testing
1. I ask: “What are the strategic objectives your organization needs to
accomplish in the next few years?”
2. 9-box grid: I ask managers how well their employees perform now
and what their potential is to achieve the strategic objectives.
3. Knowing what to look for, finding the right assessment is easy. In
fact, I don’t even need a test, behavioral questions will suffice.

11. Sidenote:
A better alternative to interviews may be test-driving
candidates in a simulation that poses the
challenges they would likely encounter in the future
role and observing their abilities.

12. Developability (Gibbons et al., 2006)
I assess how difficult/easy different facets of my objective are to
develop
I can then rank candidates based on their assessment results and
only choose those who are strong in difficult-to-develop areas but
may have some work to do on more developable dimensions.
This is the high in high potential – selecting employees with the
highest ability and aspiration to achieve organizational goals or
strategy.

13. Planning development
From assessment, I can answer key questions such as (1) how ready
these HiPos are? (2) What are their specific needs? (3) What are
their common needs as a group?
Knowing I picked the highest-ability candidates and their specific
needs, planning the development portion of the HiPo program gets
much easier.
6 to 12 months later, I reassess their improvement on the same
abilities and if the time is right, promote the readiest person.

14. Change of strategy?
Inform the HiPos of the change in direction and thank them for
participating.
Then repeat: identify the new abilities and aspirations, ask managers
to fill out the 9-box grid, set up assessments, and start developing a
new group of HiPos who are closest to achieving the new strategy
This will only help the company stay nimble in today’s volatile and
uncertain economy.

15. So what do your HiPos have the potential to achieve?
High potentials are employees who have the highest
ability and aspiration to achieve a particular
organizational goal or strategy.

16. Sources
Caplan, J. (2011). The value of talent: Promoting talent management across the organization. Philadelphia, PA: Kogan Page Limited.
De Meuse, K. P. (2011). What’s smarter than IQ? Learning Agility. Retrieved from The Korn/Ferry Institute website:
http://www.kornferryinstitute.com/sites/all/files/documents/briefings-magazine-
download/What%27s%20Smarter%20than%20IQ%3F%20Learning%20Agility.%20It%E2%80%99s%20No.1%20%E2%80%93%20abo
ve%20intelligence%20and%20education%20%E2%80%93%20in%20predicting%20leadership%20success.%20.pdf
Gibbons, A. M., Rupp, D. E., Snyder, L. A., Holub, A. S., & Woo, S. E. (2006). A preliminary investigation of developable dimensions. The
Psychologist-Manager Journal, 9(2), 99-123.
Hogan Assessment Systems. (2012). Five steps to a better high potential program. Retrieved from
http://www.hoganassessments.com/sites/default/files/Hi_Po_WP_8.12_R4.pdf
O’Leonard K., & Loew, L./Bersin & Associates (2012). Leadership development factbook 2012: Benchmarks and trends in U.S. leadership
development. Available to research members at www.bersin.com/library.
Szumai, J. L. (2012). High potential….to do what? Retrieved from Human Synergistics website: http://www.humansynergistics.com/docs/case-
studies-and-white-papers/high-potential-to-do-what-szumal-v-1-0.pdf?sfvrsn=0