04th March 2025
Reimagining the Nine-Box Grid for Smarter Talent Planning
We pointed out all these mistakes are easy to remedy to ensure your organisation extracts the most value from this timeless talent process.
The main point of our article is that the nine-box grid works well when there is discipline around process. Here we’d like to point out that, with the discipline mastered, there is the opportunity to insert some creativity to your talent planning processes.
Here’s the thing, you don’t have to restrict your nine-box analysis to just Performance and Potential!
The nine-box process can be used to differentiate your people on any two dimensions. The key is that the two dimensions don’t measure the same thing. In most cases what we see is that organisations have one dimension related to results or outcomes and one dimension that reflects an important focus area for the organisation.
Here are examples we’ve seen of other dimensions being used with the nine-box process:
DELIVER & DEVELOP
- Deliver: The relative ability of individuals to deliver on commitments.
- Develop: The relative ability of leaders to get their people promoted or to orchestrate genuine development moves.
PERFORMANCE & UTILITY
- Performance: The relative level of performance of individuals being assessed.
- Utility: The relative extent to which individuals could perform other roles or are available to take on other roles within the organisation.
OUTCOMES & ENGAGEMENT
- Outcomes: The relative level of contribution of leaders to the creation of value in the organisation as measured by revenue growth, cost reduction, simplification etc.
- Engagement: The relative level of engagement of teams as measured by the organisation’s Engagement Survey (where the tool measures to manager level).
RESULTS & DIVERSITY
- Results: The relative level of achievement in business results among a group of leaders.
- Diversity: The relative level of diversity in teams or actions take to increase diversity in teams by the group of leaders.
TEAM PERFORMANCE & VALUES LEADERSHIP
- Team Performance: The relative level of business performance of Teams within the organisation.
- Values Leadership: The relative level of Teams living the values of the organisation.
There are more details on the dimensions above, but we can’t give away the secret sauce here.
If you’d like a free brainstorming session to explore how you might add a new dimension to your talent planning, get in touch.
Generator Talent Group
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