25th February 2025
The Nine-Box Grid. Chances Are You’re Doing it Wrong
The Nine-Box Grid has been around since before that first brave sole wore chinos, a chambray shirt, and boat shoes to work on a Friday.
In my humble opinion, the Nine-Box Grid is still one of the best talent planning tools around. But I say that in the full knowledge that most organisations who use it are making one or more of six big mistakes.
A Bit of Background
The Nine-Box Performance/Potential Grid was originally designed to deal with the phenomenon that performance in one’s current job is not necessarily the best predictor of performance in a role at the next level or in a new or different role.
Shouldn’t doing a great job be reason enough for promotion? The answer, it turns out is not necessarily. Even back then we knew the best salesperson did not always turn out to be the best sales manager because the job of a sales manager has several different requirements to that of salesperson. The question was how do we discuss and plan for this?
Performance, was, is still, and will always be, a critical factor in talent discussions; no manager would have credibility without a track record of performance.
Enter the construct of Potential; the degree to which an individual is likely to successfully take on new or different responsibilities. And with that the Nine-Box Performance/Potential Grid was created.
However, since those early days (and we are talking the 1980’s here) while the Nine-Box Grid has been taken up by many organisations, most are making mistakes in applying it, to the point where the validity of the tool gets questioned.
Here are the most common mistakes we see:
Mistake #1 – Not Seeing The Nine-Box Tool as a Relative Assessment
The core purpose of the tool is to differentiate talent so that targeted development plans can be put in place. And the nine-box model was intended to assess a group of people doing the same (or very similar) role relative to each other.
The process to establish relativity is to divide the group being assessed into equal thirds; High, Middle and Low. The order within the thirds doesn’t matter, only which third the person falls into. It was never, and should never be, a process of just putting a name in a particular box.
Mistake #2 – Not Doing Two Assessments.
There are two axes in the Nine Box Model, Performance and Potential. These are different constructs, and they’re not necessarily correlated. An individual can be a high performer and have limited potential and vice versa. The group must be sorted into thirds first on Performance and then a second time on Potential.
The results of these two assessments are then plotted onto the Nine Box Grid. That’s how names end up in the nine various boxes.
Mistake #3 – Not Conducting the Activity as a Group Exercise
The assessment should be conducted by a group of managers at the next level up from the people being assessed. For example, a group of Sales Managers conduct the assessment on the Salespeople that report to them collectively.
An effective technique is to have the raters work in pairs or threes in deciding on their thirds. And then undertaking a consensus discussion to align on the High, Middle and Low thirds.
You think this has the potential for conflict? You bet! That’s the point. The idea is that through discussion there will be a consensus on the talent at the next level.
Mistake #4 – Not Using Evidence Based Criteria
The criteria used to differentiate people into thirds, High, Middle and Low, needs to be evidence based, not subject to opinion.
This tends to be easier for the Performance axis as the raters can use data like, for example, sales performance, margin improvement, customer retention. The main thing is the criteria are agreed upfront.
While Potential is always a bit of a bet, there are evidence-based markers that can be included in the criteria such as initiative, resilience, courage and many more. Again, the key is the criteria are clear, agreed up front, and that raters must be able to call on examples of the individual demonstrating (or not demonstrating) the criteria as evidence for a rating.
Mistake #5 – Not Deciding Development Actions in Real Time
There is a clear development strategy aligned to every one of the nine boxes. So, no matter which box a person ends up in, there must be agreement in the room on the action steps that will be put in place to keep every individual moving. In my experience if it’s not agreed in the room and written down in the moment it won’t happen.
And, once development actions have been decided and codified, then the nine-box grid is deleted, destroyed, burned, or something similar. Once action has been agreed the boxes don’t come into play again until next time you run the process.
Mistake #6 – Not Benchmarking Top Talent
If you plan to integrate the nine-box discussion with your succession management process then, once you’ve identified your top talent (e.g. the people in the Top Box, or Top 3 Boxes), they key is to ask; If this is our best, how good are our best?
There are two ways to benchmark your talent. The first is with empirical, independent assessment that includes things like accomplishment interviews, psychometric and cognitive assessments, business simulations, and the like. The second is by looking at the people doing the same or similar jobs in your competitors or organisations adjacent to your industry.
Or do both.
Is this necessary? Well if the sports team you follow didn’t apply this principle they would fall behind the pack pretty quickly, so, what’s good for the goose . . . .
Are you making any of these mistakes?
If yes, the good news is these mistakes are easy to remedy.
If you want to sharpen your talent protocols to keep your organisation at the leading edge, get in touch. I’d be happy to send you an outline of how the conduct a mistake free Nine Box workshop, for free. I’d also be happy to run one for you; not free, but not expensive.
Justin Miles
Categories: Uncategorised
