Part 2 with Benne Peto gets under the bonnet of the model: how to assess potential rigorously, why the nine-box grid falls short, and how psychometrics plus observation reveal the real “sweet spot” for sustained performance. It is the most practical section for leaders trying to move from intuition to evidence in talent decisions.

Hello, and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast.

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Welcome to part two of three.

And when we think about this data-led approach that focuses on understa-

first understanding those capabilities and behaviors that we need more of,

then recognizing where individuals have, individuals within the business

currently, where they all sit in respect to, their potential to be able

to develop those behaviors and their performance as it correlates alongside it.

Yeah.

And then to be able to target each of tho- each of those individual groups

with tailored, tailored enablement is- Yeah … yeah, is really the key.

I guess the… I think that the interesting piece for me here is we,

we talk about that, how you bring the practitioner on the journey and

that, that what's in it for them.

But as you were going through that process at Evelyn, Benne, what did you, you've

mentioned the-- you've mentioned some of the things that the practitioners

have reflected and said, "Oh, that's great," and we got those sound bites.

Yeah.

But during the process, how was the… How, did people feel during the process?

'Cause, it's a big thing.

You're in role, you're an experienced practitioner, you've been giving

advice for couple of decades, and then all of a sudden, you're asked

to, to do a couple of assessments.

Yeah.

I think, one, we didn't position it as an assessment-

Yeah,

in that way.

Okay.

In reality, that's what it is.

But we had a, I think, a quite long debate before we, actually launched

the program with the commercial leads that this data would only

be used for positive development.

Okay.

So philosophically, we had that buy-in from the commercial leadership,

from the start because we were…

we, did our first pilot just before a merger, but then did others- afterwards.

So you can imagine-

Sensitive time.

Practitioners going, "Okay, you're asking me to do

profiling," yeah, "at a time when you may want to reduce headcount." Yeah?

So we actually had to deal with that question head-on and- Yeah

reassure people.

first of all, we never used it negatively.

Yeah.

But, and we did, Q&A sessions with practitioners, and we knew this

question was going to come up, and, at the end of the day, you know

who your li- low performers are.

You have the data.

You don't need to use this analysis if you were looking to reduce headcount.

So for me, it wasn't about that.

It's about saying, "This is being used really positively.

It's being used to, for your development," yeah- "to help us understand the profile,

to help us understand the capabilities, and make sure that we're giving you the

development that you need to succeed, and building trust and delivering on that."

So how you launch it, how you communicate, how you bring people

on the journey is really important.

Yeah.

And at certain times within an organization's journey, people may

understandably be nervous- about completing these sorts of insight

tools, and that's- Yeah … we talked about insight- Yeah

and profiling rather than assessment, yeah?

Yeah.

And so we looked at it and described it as something positive that

they were gonna get something out of, and we addressed those negative questions.

I-- just coming back to the low performers thing, 'cause I

think it's a, I think it's a kind of important- point, and it is, you're

right, it's something that I think m- can make people very uncomfortable.

One of the ways I think about this is to say, look, it's exactly as Benne says.

Y- you know who the low performers are, that's not a secret.

The numbers are the numbers, right?

Yeah.

So that's not the- not like that's- we're not finding out

anything new in that sense.

But by understanding tho- of, those low performers, which of them have

got real potential to move out of the low performer category, right?

And, y- that gives you an enormously important insight.

There is a clearly a difference between those people who have g-

who are low performers who really don't have necessarily the right

personality traits to develop their capabilities effectively, right?

And for those people, they may be indeed in the wrong role, but it's

really important to know the ones that do and are just have never

had the capability development.

So in some sense, what we're doing is we're not boxing people into being,

the bad people, bad person box.

We're doing exactly the opposite.

We're actually trying to add a level of nuance to people in the low ca-

l- low, the low performer category to help see how they can best be helped.

So it, I think it is to some extent a matter of kind of mindset, but I

always think, I know it's always a, fear, and I absolutely understand

why, but I think we're actually doing the reverse of boxing people- Yeah

into the, in, into the the bad person's box.

Yeah.

and this is, it's really got to be sold, as you describe, as an

opportunity- Yeah … for everyone.

Yeah?

Yeah.

And that's why you do need to have development in place for everyone.

yeah.

It's just more targeted.

Yeah.

the level of investment you're making needs to be well thought through,

yeah, so that you're getting the right return on that investment.

So you need to deliver on that promise, and then people engage.

the,

the insight or assessment was optional, right?

Yeah.

So it, we, I mean- Yeah … you can't force someone to- No … take

a personality profiling.

You can try, but that's obviously not the right way to do it.

So through selling, demonstrating what's in it for the practitioner,

yeah, through building trust and through senior management and middle management

advocacy, we got over 85% of people- Yeah

to complete the profiling voluntarily.

And then afterwards, when we closed the window and, a few mon- people would see

the positive things happening and the progr- people were contacting us and

saying, "Oh, can I do it now?" Yeah.

So you can do it through positive messaging and through building trust.

Yeah.

Yeah and Benne, you mentioned ROI there- Yeah … And again, when we think about

this, it's an incredibly important point for any business, any organization.

and particularly when you're thinking about th- that sort of, when you're

going through those, transitional periods as well, talking about merger,

mergers and acquisitions, what have you.

I think this is something that I see or, c- come across where,

again, you, Let's say you've got an organization of 500 people, right?

500- Yeah … client-facing people.

Yeah.

and you've got X amount of budget to, to spend on it, and people

say, "Okay, I've got that amount of budget, I've got that many people.

That means I can spend that much per person." Yeah.

Whereas I guess what we're saying here is, through having a targeted approach will

allow you to spend your money in the right places to get the greatest value for the

individual, but also for the business.

Yes.

So how much… Now, if you had to I'm not gonna ask you to

quantify it in numbers- Yeah

but how much of a difference did it make to your overall ROI, do you think?

Yeah.

in terms of, specifically on that pilot program, we got, a ROI

over three years of over 400%.

Yeah And I've never seen that.

No,

yeah.

I've never experienced that before.

So now, of course, different program, and obviously that was

with the high potential people- Yeah

right?

And so you're going to, that average is going to be brought down if you're needing

to make investments on others, then that's fine, you're gonna need to do that.

But I've never seen an ROI like that.

So by undertaking the right development with the right people,

you can really smash- those RI, ROI numbers, the, out the water.

you, I've never seen them before.

And accept that you're going to get lower ROI in terms of other programs

that you might be rolling out.

But when you're looking at your overall return on investment, it's

still gonna be much higher than you've ever experienced before.

Yeah.

Because, you have got a, segment where you're really, optimizing

your return on investment.

Yeah.

Understandably, it might be lower across others, but at the end of the

day, it's still gonna be much higher than you've ever experienced before.

Yeah.

Yeah.

it's that piece, isn't it, of, recognizing the bi- as part of the

bigger picture and not thinking of those diff- those different groups.

and yeah, the again, there might be leaders out here thinking, "Oh,

this is great, so I'm gonna create a targeted program- Yeah … that's

gonna help me to, the, enablement program that's gonna help me to target

the right things to the right place.

I'm gonna take the nine-box grid that we do every-

every month with or every quarter with our leaders to as- that we assess our

team against because I trust my leadership team, and they're great at that."

Like … Yeah, I can see you smiling.

Bill's laughing, right?

We all know what's coming, but why doesn't that work?

Yeah.

the nine-box grid, which is, a assessment of performance and potential, and it

has its place, yeah, and that's fine.

But if you're talking about 500 people, yeah, and you're trying to, assess

potential within that, we know that line management, human judgment is-

It's very poor

it's poor,

yeah It's very, but it's … we can dance around it, Benne-

Yeah … but the truth is- It's- … it's, very poor, and the data is unequivocal.

Yeah managers and th- this is where the old availability heuristic plays in.

Judging potential is hard.

N- knowing whether I like somebody is easy.

Yeah.

I'm gonna just tell you, I can tell you all the people I like have high potential.

it's- no, that's, fine … that, and it's not because th- leaders

are deliberately doing a bad thing.

Yeah.

It's because that's the only thing they can do.

Yeah.

I say, and that, y- we as human beings, we- Yeah … carry so much bias that's

introduced into that potential assessment.

As you said, I think line managers find it really hard to assess potential.

how do I think about it?

It's always been a challenge.

Yeah.

But if you can assess potential in an analytical, rigorous way-

Yeah … the performance data you've got nailed, hopefully-

Yeah … then you've got your insight.

So the nine-box grid as a, thinking about potential and performance, it's great,

but we've never been able to really approach the analysis of performance in

a rigorous and structured manner, because we've just relied on people to do it.

and bless us, we're not very good at it.

no.

Yeah.

That's a nicer way of putting it, Benne.

Yeah, I was like, yeah.

But even-

and, Mi- that, that's only sensible, right?

Yeah.

Because, what people can do is they can obs- observe behaviors and they

can see, but it, you're asking them to judge people on behaviors they haven't

observed, but they might be able to.

So you're asking them to judge them on hypothetical behavior.

of course, this is not something that we can do, right?

It's just not a, it's not a reasonable request.

And, to be fair to the nine-box model, it was never developed for people anyway.

The nine-box model was originally designed in order to judge businesses in

a portfolio of businesses, and then it migrated into the HR world by accident.

it was never consciously created to do this because it's

not a sensible thing to do.

So yeah, as Benne says, not, we, now we can do better.

Yeah.

We can do much better.

so again, if we think about who's, the audience

listening to this, they say, what, what does better look like?"

So what does, what's the… Let- let's put a bit more meat on the bones in terms

of, so we talked about the, Benne, you talked about the, the, we talked a little

bit about the sort of psychometrics.

So why is that such an important component in this in terms of

understanding one's potential?

Yeah.

per our underlying personality traits that may manifest themselves on a

day-to-day basis or may be a bit hid- hidden, they are what, what drives our

ability to behave in a certain way and our ability to perform in a certain way.

And on a day-to-day basis, as you've described, you might not

get a lot of insight into those.

So what we're doing with this approach is using psychometrics to

really get some tangible insight into those underlying personality

traits in a pretty concrete way.

Yeah?

And personality traits are pretty stable over time.

They are.

Yeah.

So they don't oscillate a lot.

They might change a little bit- Yeah

as you go through your life, but that's over years- not weeks and months.

Yeah?

So you can use this to make some really informed decisions as opposed to what

we've described with the nine-box grid, when thinking human beings are

thinking about potential guesswork.

Yeah?

So this is why personality traits and that analysis is really important.

It is, rigorous.

it's statistically sound, it's researched, and therefore it is a really fantastic way

of making informed decisions about people.

Yeah, I think, I c- I completely agree.

And, just to amplify that slightly, and I, know sometimes people find the words

personality traits or psychometrics a bit a bit abstract or a bit weird

or just a bit spooky in some way.

another way of thinking about that axis is to think about preferences,

which is another sort of way about talking about the same thing.

And, yeah, I think the th- the example that I know a lot of people find

kinda easiest to get their head around is, we know that extraversion and

introversion are relatively stable personality traits over long periods

of people's lives, and this is not a, this is not an, a brilliant novel

insight, right?This is very well known.

And we have psychometric tools that can assess that pretty, rigorously.

And y- so if you're asking people to do, develop capabilities which really rely on

extraversion as being a vital thing, and things like networking extensively is a

good example of that, It's not that people who are low on that axis can't do it.

If I say low on that preference perhaps can't do it, but it

takes them a lot more energy.

Those people for whom, as it were, it's a high preference or you could say it's

part of their personality, or you could say it comes naturally, all of these

things are in some way equivalent, it takes them much less energy to do, and so

they tend to be much more effective at it.

So just a kind of way of thinking about that axis which perhaps

resonates with people a little bit.

Yeah.

And that, of course, is so then important when we're thinking

about those behaviors and those capabilities because- Absolutely … if

we've got a team of people who might, yes, be good at it, so therefore

performing, if they're not enjoying it, how sustainable is that- Absolutely

for the long term?

And there's- Absolutely … yeah, as it go- as it turns into, yeah, the, w-

what happens a few months later, right?

Yeah.

if you ask… Sorry, J- Benne.

I'm just gonna- No, go ahead.

No, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Yeah

I'm just gonna, you know- Yeah … if you were demanding of

people, to consistently display a set of behaviors based on capabilities which

are low on their preference scale, it is very draining of energy for them, and

this is where you risk driving people into a kind of burnout situation- Yeah

'cause you're asking them to do stuff which, is just fundamentally very hard

for them in terms of their personalities.

Yeah.

Sorry, Benne.

Yeah.

no, and as you said, it's easier for some profiles, some people- with certain,

to, achieve what you're looking for.

And, one of the things, that was surprising I noticed when

I first looked at the data, the insights, was how strongly the

high performers were correlated.

Yeah.

So they really did have a sweet spot.

They really, their profiles were very, similar.

And there was only really a couple of outliers.

So when we looked at a high-performing group, they all had similar profiles,

and there were a couple of people who didn't, but that was, they were the

outliers, and they were one or two a couple in that high-performing group.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's, it… And I guess that's reassuring.

Yes.

As a CPO, you're thinking, "Hey, look, we've gone down this route. This is

absolutely the right way to go." And it, that, that clear insight that you can

then take and say, "We've definitely got this right. We now have a really good

perspective of what's important, what's gonna help to drive the business forward."

Yeah.

And then gives you that confidence to lean into it.

Yeah.

Again, versus a subjective nine-box view of-

Yeah

… Matt Best: different-

Yeah … ma- leaders I could have ended up with

something that was really broad.

Yeah.

It's a batting line.

I'm thinking, you know-" yeah … "this, isn't that useful."

Hello.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Would've been a bit disappointing.

But I didn't.

Yeah.

And w- it was, let's say, as I hoped, it gave me a

really clear sweet spot in terms of the profile we were looking for.

And there's always the exception to the rule.

Yeah.

And I think it's, at your point, in terms of, there are some people that,

through drive and effort, they can still succeed, but they are the exception.

Yeah.

It tends to be the people who have those traits that make it easier

for them to sustain that level of performance and behavior over time.

Yeah.

And, I guess the, we, that's, I think, really helpful to understand, the makeup

and the mechanism for the potential axis.

I guess the other part that we've talked about here is performance.

Yeah.

And one of the things you, you referenced earlier on, Benne, was

the importance of the observations.

And obviously, I know, you know- The, th- just help us understand,

what did that help you, what did that help you to understand?

Like, how was that different from, say, what you might get from that

team's individual line managers?

what were some of the standout things for you?

Yeah, I

think, I think if you use,

highly trained people to do some observations on your high performers,

you can really draw out and capture why, what it is they are doing that

is leading to the outcomes, yeah?

So what, leading to that high performance, and therefore capture

that and specifically develop those skills, be that networking, how they're

interacting individually with, clients.

And that becomes, your IP as well- in terms of, for our clients within our

organisation, our culture, what we see is that if you work in this way or if

you interact with clients in this way, that it is going to lead to a better

outcome for clients and a better outcome for you in terms of the performance that

you achieve in the business overall.

So what does good look like for you- in your business?

And your people are doing it.

You just need to capture it through that observation.

Be

able to see it.

and just to come back, 'cause I think, Benne, you slightly skated past it

in an earlier remark, but it's so true, is A lot of the time the high

performers can't articulate that to you.

They just do it.

Do it.

They don't know they're doing it.

They can't explain the, how, what they're doing or how they're doing it.

So it's only if you actually find ways of capturing that information

through whatever mechanisms of you, can, it's only then that you can start

to see what are the capabilities- Yeah

that are really correlated with- Yeah … performance, right?

you can't ask.

Again, wouldn't it be nice if we could just ask?

Yeah.

Yeah.

that's it.

It's that un- They

don't

know … unconscious competence.

It is unconscious.

That's, what you see a lot of, and that's why it's really important to

do the observations because then you really, capture what they're doing that's

really leading to that high performance.

But also having them in the room, right?

So when that development is going on, the unconscious competent, high

performer who's got a great reputation is sitting there going, "That's exactly

what I do, and I didn't realise that was the impact and why that is so good,

but that's exactly what I'm doing."

Yeah.

And that's the piece around bringing those high performers back into the process-

Yes

… Matt Best: as you set up the enablement to create that launchpad,

which helps to create advocacy across the program as well.

yeah.

and of course, in, in today's world, with the power of AI, we can't…

we'd love to spend, we'd love to have experts across every single one of

our practitioners all of the time, but actually, where AI comes in, it helps to

bring a bit of scale to that process as well, to create, to create environments

to measure and observe some of those things, but in more of an automated way.

Yeah.

And then spot checking with individual, with individual o- individual-

Shadowing or whatever that might look like to validate that thinking.

But I think that's a really important point as well, which helps this

approach to scale, dare I say infinitely, but to, to large, to

really large scales of organizations.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we used some of the tools, webinars, other tools, that we

used on the high-potential program.

We leveraged those across the organization, but not,

with the individual coaching.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So there's, some that are saying, "Okay, we've got this really high-quality

materials that we've used that have been proven in the pilot program.

How can we scale them up in an effective- Yeah … and efficient way?" Yeah?

So that's another thing to think about because you're not going to

want to, scale it in the same way.

You're gonna be spending too much money.

You're not gonna get a return on investment.

So think about when you're running that pilot program, or your, what

I call the high-investment or high-touch development program for

those high de- high, potential people.

Think about what you can use in there.

Develop them in a way that allows you to draw upon- some of that investment you've

made and use across the organization in a way that's not going to be expensive.

Yeah.

It's coming back to scale.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

the one, one way of thinking about it is you're never gonna beat the bookies

by putting the same bet on every horse.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There you go.

I like that, Bill.

We'll use that one.

Thanks for listening.

We'll see you again in part three.

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Goodbye.