The Two Types of High-Potential Talent
What is a
high-potential employee? Most companies have a clear picture of the
characteristics that indicate a top performer: intelligence, charisma, verbal
skill, and the ability to be both part of a team and lead one. These skills
definitely fit the criteria, but too many leaders stop there. They tend to see
and promote only one kind of high-potential talent, when in fact they need two.
Consider the
experience of an executive we know named Jack. Jack was a star. He’d spent
nearly a decade at an innovative business-to-business startup in a high-tech
field. His expertise and acumen drew the attention of a large technology
services firm, which recruited him to head up a new line of business.
If you saw Jack in
action, you knew he brought value. When he sat down with clients, or took the
stage at a conference, people walked away informed and impressed; he clarified
issues they’d never considered before. His job at his old company focused on
this skill, casting him as a subject-matter expert. But his new company had a
much broader range of technology services, from application development to
cybersecurity to governance. They needed him to link his expertise with all of
these capabilities, but he couldn’t quite figure out how to do that. The value
he brought never translated into revenue.
After a year of
lagging sales, the leaders wondered if they’d made a bad bet on Jack. Two years
of stagnation later, they were ready to let him go. If he couldn’t make an opportunity
like this take off, they figured something must be wrong with him.
We too used to assume
that when a new venture didn’t grow as expected, the leader was to blame. But
we were wrong. We now know that it would have been a terrible mistake to let Jack
go. He was still the right hire for the business; it’s the job he was given
that was wrong.
The change in our
perspective was influenced by in-depth research we did on more than 100
self-made billionaires. From early 2012 to 2014, we
ran a qualitative research study on some of the world’s wealthiest people who did not inherit their
fortunes. Our goal was to understand the factors that enabled self-made
billionaires to succeed, and whether established businesses have something to
learn from them.
In our research, we
found that self-made billionaires have a collection of internal skills — what
we call habits of mind — that they apply to everything they do. These habits of
mind tend to lead to a particular type of success, the type that eluded Jack.
They include:
· Empathetic
imagination: seeing blockbuster potential where others see only change
· Patient
urgency: operating simultaneously at multiple speeds and time frames
· Inventive
execution: bringing together creative functions and operational
departments
· Taking
a relative view of risk: worrying about the larger future instead of
immediate losses.
These are the habits
of people we call producers — innately innovative people who can conceive new
business ideas, and bring together the disparate and sometimes conflicting
business designs, resources, and talent to make those ideas successful in the
market. All of the self-made billionaires we met are producers.
But producers are only
one type of high-potential professional. The other type is performers — people
with the ability to optimize known systems and products. These often are
recognized experts like Jack. They have different habits of mind. They are
accustomed to surpassing expectations within established criteria. They can
take an enterprise that someone has designed and make it work; they’re like
actors who can shine on almost any stage, but don’t know how to set a stage
themselves.
Performers and
producers tend to spark different reactions among the people around them.
Performers generally get along with their superiors (and everyone else),
because they meet expectations. Producers, who are disposed to confound or
bypass expectations, are more likely to experience conflict; 25 percent of
self-made billionaires were fired from established businesses early in their
careers. Perhaps that’s why most stars in such businesses tend to be performers
— and why most hiring, recognition, compensation, development, and human
capital systems tend to favor performers over producers.
But every truly
successful business needs both high-potential producers and high-potential
performers. In fact, our research shows that the majority of self-made
billionaires created value as half of a producer–performer pair. Think of
Apple’s Steve Jobs (producer) and Tim Cook (performer); or John Paul Mitchell
Systems’ John Paul DeJoria (producer) and Paul Mitchell (performer).
Before our work on
producers and performers, we might have agreed that the company should replace
Jack. But we know now that Jack is not holding this business back. The company
asked a star performer to do a producer’s job. Jack was expected to imagine new
businesses, but that’s not where his talents lie.
So we proposed instead
that the business find a producer-complement for Jack — someone to come up with
a business model that leveraged his expertise. Jack and his new producer
co-leader may have to try a few business models before landing on the right
one. But the business has a much better chance of success now — and so do Jack
and his co-leader.
What about you? Is
your business faltering? Do you have the right mix of producers and performers
in the right roles? Can you design a partnership in which both types of
high-performing leaders can complement each other and thrive?
http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/The-Two-Types-of-High-Potential-Talent?gko=b2d2d
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