Rethinking High-Potential Programs: Equitable Resource Allocation in Organizations (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Many organizations have a program in place that identifies high-potential employees. But what if the very thing that led to that person being identified as high-potential is the fact that way back when, someone actually saw their potential? In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how a large percentage of people who play professional hockey in the NHL are born from January to March. He talks about how when those people started playing hockey way back when as little kids, they had a good six to nine months in their development over the kids who were born later in the year. They were starting off in a point where they were stronger, faster, probably more stable to begin with because they were a little bit older. That gap is significant when you're four or five years old. And then what happens is more resources are allocated to those older kids because they're showing greater potential. They get more support, they get more time on the ice, and year after year that compounds. And eventually it leads to a situation where a significantly larger proportion of NHL players are born early in the year than later in the year. Now let's make the parallels to business. Of course, it's important to identify where people's skills are a match with the roles that they're in, where their interests are aligned with the type of position that they're doing. However, I think we really need to be careful in not allocating resources only to the kids who were born earliest in the year. By identifying certain individuals as high potential, whether you're saying it or not, you're inadvertently sending a message that everyone else isn't quite as high potential. And what's happening generally is that the lion's share of resources in terms of training and development are allocated to those who are in the group that are identified as high potential. And oftentimes, everyone else needs to prove that they have enough potential in order to be able to get support. They need to be in the organization long enough, committed enough, doing a good enough job, when in reality, if resources were allocated in a way that supported everyone's professional development, we wouldn't see such a gap between high performing individuals and those who are maybe not considered as high performing. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, where when people are not seen as being high potential, they're going to grow into that because they're not given the support they need. And frankly, it sends a message of you're not being quite good enough. So as you're making your decisions of where to allocate resources, of course, fine, there needs to be support for people moving into leadership roles. But what about everyone else? And where are you making decisions that align with your ability to bring the entire team up to a high level of performance, rather than creating a gap between those who got more support than others?