Traditional replacement-planning systems identified people for specific positions. The output of the identification process in a replacement-planning system was a room full of organizational charts or a computer program that reflected management’s best guesses at backups for key positions. Each department had its own organizational chart with a “ladder” of boxes (some boxes had names in them; others were blank) below each critical leadership position. The boxes represented candidates who were potential replacements for the leaders at the top. Sometimes, the boxes were color-coded to reflect a candidate’s readiness to step up to the next level if a critical opening should occur. It was all very impressive. To fill in the boxes, the senior leadership discussed the strengths and weaknesses of candidates recommended by the incumbents. Typically, some executives had a passion for the replacement-planning process as well as great confidence in their ability to spot potential leaders. Some of the backup decisions were hotly debated, but most were accepted as recommended by the incumbents and approved by their manager or vice president.

Quite often the discussion ended with several empty boxes with no “ready-now” names on the replacement charts. The same person was often listed as a backup for several different positions because senior managers believed that too few candidates were strategic enough, had the right experience, or would be able to stand up to the pressure at the next level. Ironically, while the charts implied planning rigor, thoughtfulness, and a strategically focused organization in control of its destiny, in reality they often did little more than provide a false sense of security. No one told the backups that they had been identified on the replacement charts. And no one paid much attention to the data until it was time to generate a new list of backups.

In an Acceleration Pool system the focus is on filling the pool—not filling specific positions. As described in Chapter 5, considerable data are presented and discussed about each candidate, and pool members are carefully selected. The pros and cons of pool membership are explained to the prospective pool members, who then decide if they want to join. There is a psychological and very real commitment to the individual by the organization. The Executive Resource Board firmly believes that the pool members are their highest-potential people. The board signals that belief by inviting them to join the pool and by telling them what to expect as pool members.

In a traditional replacement-planning system, senior leaders met once or twice each year to check on the progress of key backups. The principle question often was, “Can he or she be moved?” The board spent relatively little time discussing skill development issues. The discussions that did occur were usually not very organized and focused on sending people to outside programs.

As you will see in this chapter, discussions are both very substantial and well organized regarding Acceleration Pool members’ job progress and developmental activities. In addition to having the opportunity to be extremely creative in defining challenging assignments because the focus is on job challenges instead of jobs, the Executive Resource Board can approve attendance at special training programs and assign executive coaches.

In a traditional replacement-planning system, decisions to fill current and forecasted job openings often were made without solid data and with little regard to the backups who had been named previously to fill those positions. In one meeting during which backups for the entire organization were considered, or in several meetings organized by business units, the board made key decisions about who would run the organization. These meetings often were stressful for the business heads presenting their people plans because they had to do a lot of “selling.” They had to sell their people forecasts for the next year, their evaluations of key people, and their recommendations of whom to promote or move—all in a limited time. Most placement decisions were quickly approved, but some were hotly debated. There often was a lack of independent, factual data on which to make solid decisions. Promotions sometimes were made to assuage egos and meet short-term business needs. Too often, discussions were unfocused and driven by competing agendas. Little attention was paid to the replacement charts.

When good ideas were recommended during discussions of development actions that were needed to fill in skill or knowledge gaps, the responsibility for following through on the recommendations often was unclear. For example, the senior leadership might have reluctantly approved a promotion after discussing the person’s narrow organizational knowledge and poor partnering behavior. Seldom would these concerns be communicated to the person’s new direct manager, and if they were, the manager often didn’t know what to do about them.

In today’s Acceleration Pool system, the Executive Resource Board’s discussions of open positions are quite different. The process is well integrated with the organization’s business planning strategy and process. Board members’ roles and accountabilities are substantive and well defined, and they see their function as vital to the company’s short-and long-run viability. Most important, the rich discussions of individuals are well organized, with considerable documentation available on all candidates and the positions to be filled. Critical short-and long-term development issues are fully discussed in a planned manner that leads to executable actions. Creative development options are considered with specific responsibilities for actions documented.

Members of the Executive Resource Board have two main—and sometimes conflicting—responsibilities in these discussions:

They accomplish these placement responsibilities at meetings held at least twice a year—and sometimes as often as once a month. Most of the time, the board also considers development actions appropriate for pool members. Depending on the organization, this discussion of appropriate placement and development actions might be called a talent review, a succession review, a Human Resource review, an executive resource review, or a replacement-planning review. We will refer to this discussion as the talent review meeting of the Executive Resource Board.

Summarize the inventory of current and projected openings.

In anticipation of the Executive Resource Board meeting, the Human Resource department should construct an inventory of open positions and projected openings brought about by changing organizational requirements, transfers, promotions, retirements, etc. This inventory should include positions within the business unit that are the focus of the meeting as well as positions in other SBUs, divisions, etc. Ideally, documentation of these positions (including simple job descriptions) should be distributed to board members before the meeting.

Human Resource facilitators should also highlight any positions that have previously been identified as key “developmental positions,” even if the incumbent appears to be “sitting tight.” These positions are a precious organizational resource because they represent prime development opportunities. Thus, development options are limited when adequate (but not stellar) performers fill these roles over a long period. The Executive Resource Board should recommend shifting long-tenured incumbents out of such roles and ideally into positions that provide them with new challenges.

Some organizations build their open position inventory around a simple categorization scheme describing broad challenges associated with open positions (see Figure 15-2). Other tools might include a more extensive taxonomy of job challenges afforded by positions.

The meeting should open with a discussion of the inventory or some other grouping of open and projected-to-open positions. Creative thinking about developmental assignments will be stimulated by additional dialog about evolving business needs, structural changes, or market challenges that offer unique job challenges or developmental opportunities relative to specific positions.

Determine which pool members will be discussed and the order in which they will be discussed.

While each Acceleration Pool member should be discussed, it makes sense to prioritize the discussion of individual members according to the likelihood of their filling open positions. For example, HR might assign top priority to people who are ready for movement now or who are from the business unit being discussed; those who are new in their current job would have a secondary priority. All pool members should be reviewed at least every six months. Any board member should have the prerogative to direct the discussion at any time to pool members he or she feels merit a discussion.

Review the status and possible actions for all designated Acceleration Pool members.

The board considers each of the following issues for each of the designated pool members.

Review openings and tentative decisions made during discussion of pool members. Consider diversity issues. Look outside the pool when there is no good fit within it. Make final decisions.

By this time names will have been tentatively penciled in for most of the open positions. The board should reexamine the candidate slots to fill the open and projected positions with an eye toward diversity issues and the realization that it might need to stretch some people to fill positions. The board also needs to consider people outside the Acceleration Pool. This is always the most heated portion of the talent review discussion. Often, someone outside the Acceleration Pool is a more natural fit for a position because of the person’s direct experience in the area. This person might be a direct report to the open position as well as a solid corporate citizen. The Executive Resource Board must weigh the issues: Does it opt for the person outside the pool who is probably the popular choice, or does it stretch a pool member for the long-term good of the organization? Such choices typically bring out valid points on both sides. There are no right or wrong answers; the quality of the consensus hinges on the quality of the board’s discussion.

Review aggregate trends. Determine group-level development goals, programs, and events.

Immediately following the discussion of pool members as individuals is the appropriate time to consider them as a group. Review aggregate data about pool members to identify themes and trends in organizational strengths and challenges. Evaluate the diversity of Acceleration Pool membership relative to strategic goals. Consider common development needs. For example, a review of Acceleration Pool members at a major consulting organization revealed an alarming lack of web-based knowledge and skills. The lack of readiness among even the highest-potential associates to adapt their consulting advice to more Internet-driven, high-tech solutions appeared to be an enterprisewide phenomenon. As a result, the organization decided to spend several million dollars to create an e-commerce design and implementation curriculum for its consultants—not just those with high potential.

Ask: Should anyone be dropped from the Acceleration Pool?

Acceleration Pools are designed to be fluid, with people moving in and out based on evolving needs. There are clearly legitimate circumstances for moving someone out of the Acceleration Pool (e.g., when progress has plateaued). However, be careful to avoid reactive conclusions or adopting a “revolving door” approach to Acceleration Pool membership. While it often is tempting to challenge people’s continued membership in the pool because of occasional questionable performance or a recent failure, it is important to recall the original rationale for placing the person in the pool. It is also essential for the board to consider the causes of poor performance: Was the individual put in over his or her head? Was there sufficient support for acceleration expectations? Or is there truly a motivational or skill mismatch between the person’s goals and those of the organization?

Determine if there are individuals who should be invited into the Acceleration Pool.

The discussion of who will fill specific positions will unintentionally bring to the board’s attention other, heretofore-unsung individuals who might be appropriate for acceleration. See Chapter 5 for a discussion of identifying high potentials.

Debrief the meeting’s effectiveness.

At the conclusion of each meeting, the Executive Resource Board should review meeting outcomes, quality of content, and suggestions for continuous improvement. And once each year, the board should monitor its own adherence to the principles, for a successful meeting.

Reaffirm communication plans.

Ensure that the right players are in your meetings and that they understand their roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities.

Don’t forget the fundamentals of effective meeting management.

Ensure that Executive Resource Board members maintain an enterprise-level perspective.

Consider executive judgment as legitimate input, as long as it is supported with behavioral evidence.

Beware of biases and old assumptions.

Carefully consider whether high potentials are set up for success.

Remember that strategic succession management is retention insurance.

Don’t neglect the communication strategy.

Ensure that the right players are in your meetings and that they understand their roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities.

The Executive Resource Board meeting provides a unique focus on the organization’s people strategy. Because every meeting will require strategic placement decisions that will affect the organization’s ability to achieve bottom-line business objectives, it is important that everyone—up to and including the chief executive—actively participates. And all must understand their roles as well as the responsibilities they entail. Here are some of the roles we have seen in various organizations:

A newly established Executive Resource Board might want to charter itself as a team. The chartering process will help the board establish its mission and operating principles (i.e., ground rules) and define formal and informal role expectations. Agreements should be documented and communicated to all stakeholders. Once all the rules and roles have been clarified, the members might want to try an interesting exercise: offering board members the chance to discuss dysfunctional behaviors to be avoided during meetings. These often will come easily because people usually remember situations in which others demonstrated poor behavior that undermined a meeting’s effectiveness. Having such a list helps the board communicate to its members the meeting behavior and attitudes expected.

Don’t forget the fundamentals of effective meeting management.

Protocol does not equal bureaucracy; a little structure goes a long way. Effectively facilitated Executive Resource Board meetings have the following characteristics:

While those characteristics might seem obvious, sustaining this level of structure with an outspoken, opinionated group of executives is easier said than done. It usually requires a well-respected facilitator who is able to channel executive energy in a constructive manner. Although a facilitator should be seen as unbiased, he or she must also be perceived as a credible partner, empowered to be “politically incorrect” in order to challenge executive stakeholders when their biases and individual agendas emerge. Usually, a very senior, well-respected Human Resource executive is asked to facilitate meetings; that person also can provide continuity and information about open positions, development assignments, and best practices across organizational boundaries. Sometimes the senior manager at the meeting facilitates. Increasingly, at the start of an Acceleration Pool process, the consultant who helped design the process facilitates the first few Executive Resource Board meetings to provide a model for the person who will have ongoing responsibility.

A key facilitation challenge is balancing process discipline with the need for executive stakeholders to engage in a rich, free-flowing discussion about individual talent and organizational needs. The use of classic data integration principles associated with the assessment center method (Thornton & Byham, 1982) will enhance a facilitator’s ability to achieve the appropriate discussion depth.

Ensure that Executive Resource Board members maintain an enterprise-level perspective.

For most of the year, Executive Resource Board members get results through relentless focus, passion, ownership, and advocacy of opportunities in their area of functional/geographical/product responsibility. During board meetings they must transcend that more limited point of view and adopt a field of vision that represents the overall organization’s best interest. This often means supporting the rotation and promotion of their own key players into roles outside their jurisdiction—even into other business units. Remember: The population in the Acceleration Pool often is accurately described as “corporate property,” whose members are beyond the unique province of any specific business unit, function, etc.

Conceptually, Executive Resource Board members understand that supporting acceleration might involve tough decisions that could have a detrimental effect on their own areas of responsibility. While they might understand the importance of broader-based, organizationwide concerns, it often is difficult for them to rise above issues that are more parochial. For example, most executive compensation systems breed provincial behavior. Nevertheless, when senior officers visibly support a long-term perspective on the use of people, other board members will be more likely to step up to a long-range, enterprisewide perspective. Over time, it should be a zero-sum game (i.e., board members will give up their best but will also get another board member’s best).

Obviously, there are other inherent challenges to maintaining an enterprise-level perspective. The first is rooted in fundamental human nature. Loyalty (as well as dependence on key contributors) makes it difficult for board members to distinguish those who are indispensable to them today from those who are indispensable for the organization’s future growth and success.

Second, flawed nomination processes, mixed messages regarding the importance of succession management, or poorly communicated expectations will generate dysfunctional competitive behaviors. For example, we once saw a CEO request 10 identified high potentials from each of three business units. These individuals were to enjoy special focus and resources. However, it was widely acknowledged that Business Unit A had much deeper talent than the other two. Nevertheless, the CEO, in an attempt to maintain “fairness” across business units, insisted on maintaining a quota of candidates from each business unit. This resulted in frustration and open cynicism about the organization’s commitment to maintain a legitimate Acceleration Pool process, missed opportunities to focus on key talent, and widespread recognition that some of the organization’s best performers were being left out of the Acceleration Pool.

Consider executive judgment as legitimate input, as long as it is supported with behavioral evidence.

For all the right reasons, HR facilitators diligently focus executive stakeholders on objective, behavioral performance and assessment data when discussing an individual’s potential. However, their efforts to avoid sweeping conclusions based on hearsay, opinion, and conjecture can impede the introduction of informal (but important) executive observations. Executive observations offer a unique and often accurate perspective to a talent review discussion.

To optimize the value of executive insight, it is important to communicate clear expectations about the “packaging” of judgments or opinions. First, executive stakeholders should be encouraged to use common terminology when discussing Acceleration Pool members—the executive descriptors adopted by the organization (see Chapter 6).

Second, and even more important, executive stakeholders should challenge one another to advocate or defend their input with specific behavioral examples. Doing so reflects the philosophy of assessment center data integration, which demands an etiquette of challenge and behavioral defense of evaluative statements. Making executives understand that behavioral examples are simply brief descriptions of what someone said or did contributes to constructive discussions that focus on fact instead of conjecture.

Obviously, in the context of a talent review discussion, evaluative comments might launch into or follow a behavioral example. Here is an example: “I believe Eric is very entrepreneurial (evaluative comment) because in our business ventures meeting last week, he offered more ideas than everyone else combined. Further, at the end of the meeting, two executives publicly thanked him for his role in the meeting. One specifically commented that the meeting’s success could be largely credited to the individual who thought to invite Eric (behavioral example).”

Beware of biases and old assumptions.

Accurate judgment regarding candidates’ potential and progress can be distorted by a variety of biases, including implicit preferences (e.g., individuals under 40; favored backgrounds, such as marketing or sales; and the “looks like me” phenomenon). Furthermore, executives have long memories—even when their assumptions about a candidate’s skills or motivations are obsolete, labels and impressions often live on. This applies to reputations that both underestimate or overstate an individual’s potential. If old information is introduced into the discussion about an individual, board members should challenge its appropriateness or give it less weight.

The senior author vividly remembers an Acceleration Center for a large retail company in which a certain individual did very well in all areas assessed. A regional personnel vice president happened to be at the center and was asked why the person had not been promoted more rapidly. (The pool member was about 10 years behind his cohorts.)

The vice president explained that he was the person’s district manager when the individual joined the company. An early decision made by the person was to order a large number of college sweatshirts in anticipation of the local college doing very well during the football season. As it turned out, the college didn’t have a very good season, and the sweatshirts didn’t sell. Because of the individual’s decision, the company took a large loss. The regional personnel vice president admitted that every time he looked at that individual, he always remembered the sweatshirts.

Carefully consider whether high potentials are set up for success.

Do you remember any high fliers who failed to live up to their predicted potential because the organization squandered the opportunity to optimize their development? Perhaps the organization fell into the trap of moving them too quickly to achieve real learning or accountability for actions, or maybe the individuals didn’t have sufficient support to rebound from an earlier failure. Or perhaps they were given mixed messages about priorities or faced organizational systems that were inconsistent with stated values.

There are many examples of high-potential people who fell short but who might have succeeded had they been set up with the right support systems. An important ingredient of a successful Acceleration Pool system is a solid understanding of skill gaps and motivations or personality traits that are likely to enhance or derail progress. Insights gained through in-depth discussion of performance trends and the challenges offered by an assignment can help an Executive Resource Board to provide highly individualized support systems.

Remember that strategic succession management is retention insurance.

The motivations and career aspirations of potential Acceleration Pool candidates often are an afterthought in talent review meetings. While participation in Acceleration Pools is certainly elective, it also should be attractive in terms of being flexible enough to address people’s unique needs and goals. Furthermore, Executive Resource Boards might want to consider explicit, aggressive retention strategies for individual pool members who are frequently courted by competitors or other outside organizations.

Two common motivational challenges presented by high-potential Acceleration Pool candidates are mobility constraints and a sense of professional identity/affiliation with a specific function or role type. To address the first challenge, organizations can consider creative strategies to overcome expressed mobility constraints. While some organizations rigidly view mobility as a minimum requirement for participation in an Acceleration Pool, others want to optimize the likelihood of participation by offering alternatives that will enable high fliers to take developmental assignments without uprooting their school-aged children. Although jobs often require a full-time local presence, many developmental assignments can be accomplished with a combination of remote and on-site presence. Such “commuter” arrangements are becoming more common. Individuals might also have the option of working at home when their presence at the workplace is not essential. In general, most Acceleration Pool members will appreciate the organization’s proactive support of family and personal needs and will recognize it as an expression of perceived value.

The issue of professional affiliation can present more of a challenge. At DDI, for example, many of our strongest consultants—and likely future leaders—have an intense affinity for a specialized line of work. These individuals have spent years completing advanced degrees and are published thought leaders in their occupational niches (e.g., succession management, selection, leadership training, and organizational development). For some, their sense of identity is closely tied to their expertise.

On one hand it is reasonable to ask people who take pride in their technical affiliation to step out of their niche in order to build their cross-business exposure and broader general management skills. However, it is foolhardy to ignore the preferences of the very individuals who are most attractive to our competition. As a result, we have learned that benefits associated with rotational assignments outside an individual’s technical preference need to be thoughtfully communicated and framed in terms of the clear upside for both the person and the organization.

Timing is crucial—there are definite windows of time in which the organization is most vulnerable to talent raids or other unwanted turnover. Naturally, it is wise to take extra care to involve Acceleration Pool members in strategic career decisions when they have attractive alternatives.

Don’t neglect the communication strategy.

Packaging the Executive Resource Board’s recommendations to Acceleration Pool members should be a specific point of discussion in the talent review meeting. The board must carefully consider who will best convey—and frame—the learning objectives for new assignments, particularly if there is a need to sell the opportunity to the pool member. This interaction also affords a constructive opportunity for feedback as well as positive messages about the individual’s perceived value. Most Acceleration Pool members are very hungry to understand how senior leaders see their progress and potential.

Remember, too, the importance of communication to managers, mentors, and other organizational stakeholders who will be expected to facilitate the growth of Acceleration Pool members. Their expectations for supporting growth must be clarified and their buy-in assured.