Creating career plans for your team

There are tons of articles on the Internet talking about how important it is to develop employees. We repeatedly hear that an essential asset that conforms a Company are their people, and I agree with that statement, in my view:

Any company without its people is only an empty brand

While we may all agree on the importance of training people, we can very seldom read about creating training plans and allowing growth in an organization.
Creating such plans is critical to keep employees motivated, reduce the attrition rate, and achieve the Company’s long-term goals.
Having unqualified people in a position causes additional efforts, costs, reworks, unnecessary stress, and in many cases, customer distrust.

Knowing our team:

I will describe a very traditional method called the GE-Mckinsey Nine-Box Framework (McKinsey, 2008) to create a career plan. Figure 1 shows the 3 x 3 Matrix.

Figure 1: GE-McKinsey Nine-Box Framework. I adapted the meaning inside each box.

We will evaluate each team member in terms of potential and performance relative to the overall team. Because of this subjectivity, outstanding or poor performers could also be considered differently in a different group; thus, it is crucial to consider this once we discuss the specific career path.
As a general rule, a team behaves following a Normal Distribution with a standard deviation of 1, meaning that around 68% of the people are performing well, while ~16% will be underperforming or overperforming. Figure 2 shows graphically this distribution.

Figure 2: Normal distribution with a Standard Deviation of 1

When we evaluate our overall team, we need to keep this in mind to force ourselves to differentiate clearly in which category each team member falls.

Performance

Performance (Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, n.d.) describes how well or badly you do something; how well or poorly something works.

When we evaluate team members in terms of their performance, they will inevitably end in one of the following three categories:

1. Outstanding performers: People that execute their job extraordinarily well. On-time, with high accuracy and efficiency. They out stand from the rest of the team members.
2. Good performers: People that provide results according to the expectation and sometimes above.
3. Poor performers: People that deliver results with lower quality than the rest of the team members.

Potential

Potential (Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, n.d.) is something that can develop into something or be developed in the future.

Similar to performance, when we categorize each team member in one of the following areas:

• Limited: This category is for those people we identify as already developed to its potential.
• Moderate: This refers to team members who we foresee the potential to take a higher position in their career in the long term.
• High potential: Team members that are ready within the next two years to take two steps or more above their current position

Once we have identified the potential and performance of each one of our team members, we are ready to develop the individual career path.

Figure 3 shows a general guideline to define the corresponding career path for each one of the team members; however, to determine the appropriate measure, we need to go down to the individual-specific performance.

Figure 3: Career Paths relative to Potential and Performance. I created/adapted the meaning of each box for this blog.

Employee’s career path

When we talk about an employee’s career path, many people immediately understand it as a vertical movement in an organization, forgetting that other possibilities such as lateral moves and competence increases can also lead to further development.

• Career Growth is a vertical movement of a team member to a higher position. These team members are excellent candidates to become Manager successors, can support the operations while the Manager is out of the office (for instance, during vacation or sick leave).
• Career Expertise is increasing someone’s competencies in the same job position. We use this category for people who haven’t stayed long enough in the job and seniors or experts who don’t have further potential to grow.
• Career change is a lateral move of a team member to a different job position. Team members who don’t have the right skill sets, low performers with low potential, or people that we can further grow in their career but that require more exposure to different areas in the Company before taking a higher responsibility, are candidates for this type of development.

Agreement with the team members:

The career path is a bilateral discussion, and we need to discuss and agree with each team member on the next steps. The Manager is responsible for supporting, defining, and coordinating on developing each team member to better support the Company’s mission and goals. Still, it’s ultimately each individual’s responsibility to take control of their career.

To complete the plan, set up two or three S.M.A.R.T goals. Some examples can be:

• Define specific training plans
• Define specific training on the job activities to increase certain competencies
• Define improvement actions

Have an open conversation with your team members, and discuss and assess as objectively as possible. The more specific and concrete you can come, the more robust your plan will be.

Remember that building a career path is fundamental for people to feel engaged. When someone feels appreciated and sees a long-term relationship with the Company, the natural reaction is to stay and deliver results. In return, trained and experienced people will boost productivity and efficiency to meet the Organization’s Goals and Mission.

As a final word, I would like to leave some final thoughts regarding management and employee development.

The Manager Golden rules for employee development:

• Managers are responsible for developing the people under them: If you have people under your responsibility, it is part of your duty to ensure that your team is continuously improving.
• Managers don’t own their people: It is always better to let an employee go to another department within the Company than keep them against their will in your department; doing so will only demotivate people and, in many cases, end up in a resignation.
• One of the Manager’s goals is to make the team members grow as much as possible: Making people grow can only result in a motivated, result-oriented, and high-performing team.
• Managers must develop their replacement: Some inexperienced managers may feel that creating a replacement for their position is like writing a suicide note, but it is the opposite. Having someone who can temporarily replace you allows you to have additional support. You are also preparing the organization so that you can take a future position.
• Managers must create some level of knowledge redundancy: Identify the critical knowledge you have in your organization, and find some backup for those key people; remember, people leave, get sick, and go on vacation. Not planning some redundancy is adding a risk of burning out your key team members.

Having a career path is fundamental for people to feel engaged, and although we know that people will eventually leave, we want to keep our best people staying longer. This will naturally happen if they feel appreciated and can foresee a future. In return, trained people will boost the Company’s productivity and efficiency to meet the Organization’s Goals and Mission.

References:

McKinsey (2008,September 1). Enduring Ideas: The GE–McKinsey nine-box matrix. In McKinsey & Company. from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/enduring-ideas-the-ge-and-mckinsey-nine-box-matrix#

Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. (n.d.). Oxford Learner’s Dictionary. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/