PDI Ninth House, a Korn/Ferry Company, Announces an Innovative End-to-End Approach to High-Potential Talent

MINNEAPOLIS, March 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- PDI Ninth House, a Korn/Ferry company, today unveiled TalentSync™ Road Map for High-Potential Leaders, an offering that brings together the best practices for ensuring that organizations have the right leaders ready when needed to achieve business success. TalentSync takes organizations through the entire high-potential cycle by identifying, developing, accelerating readiness and easing transition into new roles.

The price of not preparing leaders for new roles is immense. In fact, according to the Corporate Leadership Council, nearly 40 percent of internal job moves made by people identified by their companies as "high potentials" end in failure.  

"There are many reasons these failures may happen, starting with not choosing the right people to be part of the high-potential pool in the first place, all the way up to not giving leaders support when they land in a new role," said Cori Hill, PDI Ninth House's global leader of high potential leadership. "Our approach integrates the entire high-potential process and aligns it with other talent management initiatives such as performance reviews and succession management to ensure that companies' talent management spend works most effectively."

Optimal high-potential strategies begin with the organization's current and future business needs, and then align those needs with leadership programs that reap the greatest organizational success. A recent PDI Ninth House and Bersin by Deloitte study on the High-Potential Experience Cycle found that organizations who actively implement a systems approach to high-potential talent were more satisfied that they were taking the necessary steps to have talented leaders ready when they needed them.

"This approach is especially critical when organizations look at high-impact roles such as the move from mid-level leader to business unit leader," said Hill. "Failure in these transitions could prove catastrophic and companies can't afford to take this kind of chance."

PDI Ninth House's TalentSync systems approach incorporates the following:

• Identifying Potential – Good performance in a current role does not necessarily equate to high-potential for the next role. PDI Ninth House's process involves conducting a high-potential nomination to narrow the pool, reviewing performance data and assessing for leadership potential based on interest, experience, psychological and cognitive foundations and possible derailers.
• Driving Development – Effective development improves the overall competence and engagement of a talent pool. Steps to creating a solid program involve implementing an objective multi-rater assessment that provides developmental feedback; conducting development planning meetings to discuss goals and objectives that align with organizational objectives; providing challenge-based development to stretch participants to think in new ways; and consistently reviewing development progress.
• Accelerating Readiness – Once a role is defined for high-potential leaders, PDI Ninth House works to prepare them for the specific role. Elements of this include identifying the critical succession needs, developing success profiles for the key roles, assessing for readiness, providing targeted mentoring and development and conducting development progress reviews.
• Energizing Transition – Transitions are notorious danger zones for many, most particularly for high-potential talent. It is often difficult for leaders to let go of things, such as attention to detail, that made them successful in their prior role. PDI Ninth House's approach is to define a consistent and actionable onboarding and performance program, provide onboarding development and coaching in the first few months to quickly ramp up, and also provide additional targeted development after the first 90 days.

"All of these elements are very important, but managing how they all work together is key to creating tomorrow's leaders," said Hill.

About PDI Ninth House, a Korn/Ferry Company:
PDI Ninth House, a Korn/Ferry company, is the world's premier global leadership solutions company. For more than four decades, we have provided integrated assessment, development and coaching solutions around critical leadership and business challenges that most directly impact each leader's success and the success of their organization. For more information, contact PDI Ninth House at 1.612.339.0927 (in the U.S. 1.800.633.4410) or visit its website at www.pdinh.com.

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SOURCE PDI Ninth House