22nd May 2025
90% of Development is Luck
Admittedly, that’s not a great title for an article on people development. But that’s the conclusion we’ve come to. Organisations talk a lot about the importance of people development. But how much of that development is planned versus opportunistic?
In our recent post on Build or Buy, we argued that there are pros and cons in relying on external hires to fill capability gaps. The same applies to a ‘Build’ approach to talent. If you’re serious about building talent from within, then a long-term perspective and intentional, planned development moves are critical.
We’re talking about the development of top people
We interview a lot of people; some as candidates for roles we are recruiting, others as part of our executive assessment work and others as coaching clients. When we size up people’s experiences and accomplishments, high performers on a trajectory to lead a department, function or to become a CEO, sort themselves from the pack quickly.
What separates the best people from the pack is the range and the quality of their experiences
In exploring the career of high-performance and high-potential executives, we see a pattern in the experiences they have accrued over and above the jobs they have done. Their experiences include things like fixing up a poor performing business or team or rebuilding a team by managing out underperformers and attracting new talent or starting up a new line of business or leading a major change project.
High performance, high potential executives have more than big jobs on their resume; they have levels of adversity, diversity, variety and intensity of experience that ‘other’ executives don’t.
Here’s the rub
When we dig around on the how these experiences came about it becomes clear that, of these top performers, roughly only 10% have been the subject of planned, active development by their organisation. For the other 90% their development experiences have come about by chance.
That’s right, only about 1 in 10 of the best people recount being proactively sought out for an opportunity because someone identified that they needed to get that particular experience. The other 9 got the same experiences but they happened to be in the right place at the right time. Their development was because of luck. And remember, I’m talking here about the top people.
As for the rest, the great bulk of people in organisations, they remain at risk of their ‘ten years of experience’ being, in reality, 1 years’ experience repeated nine times . . . . . but that is a discussion for another post.
In other words, there’s a difference between collecting job titles and collecting experiences.
People Development is a Risk Management Activity
One reason for this, true development experiences are ones where the organisation and the individual bear a level of risk that is much higher than normal. And you don’t have to scratch far to see risk aversion impacting development opportunities.
Take hiring decisions. What is your risk appetite for talent when it comes to make-or-break situations? How many hiring managers would be willing to appoint someone who could do the job versus someone who has done the job? In our experience, nine times out of ten, hiring managers want to appoint people who have been there, done that, and got the T-Shirt.
Opportunity Abounds
Now, we would argue that many situations present development opportunities. Every vacant role screams opportunity for someone to do something new or different. Likewise, development can await those chosen for a merger or acquisition team or to champion a Transformation project.
Development Requires a Long-Term Perspective
We get it. There’s never been more pressure to deliver in the short term. But this is how you end up with a “build” strategy on paper and a “buy” strategy in practice. Meanwhile, your future leaders are toiling away in roles repeating, not expanding their experience base.
In Summary
If you want to build, not just buy, then development can’t be a side project. Development must be curated. It has to be embedded in everyday decisions about work and roles.
That means:
- Accepting that risk is part of the development process.
- Seeing every open role as a development opportunity for someone.
- Choosing potential over pedigree when development matters.
- Supporting development risk with air cover like coaching and feedback.
The organisations that get this right won’t be the ones with the flashiest EVP or the most extensive learning catalogue. They’ll be the ones who create the conditions for people to grow, on purpose, not by chance.
Generator Talent Group
Categories: Uncategorised
