Companies are always looking for the best ways to assess the potential of employees. Managers want to understand how their teams contribute to the organization, and they want to identify high performers and potential leaders along the way. Many know and use the nine-box model, for example, to map past performance against future leadership potential. The people the model identifies as those with the most promise are often the ones a company will invest in through additional training and talent development programs.
But are these measurement methods still valid? Just as our workplaces have changed, the way we measure an employee’s value also needs to change. Our belief is that companies aren’t properly identifying the right people or behaviors in the first place — they fail to accurately assess an employee’s potential value to the organization because of what they can’t see. Specifically, traditional organizational reporting structures limit managers’ visibility into how their employees are influencing and contributing to other teams. New workplace metrics are needed to help leaders get a more complete picture of this.