Article

It’s such a common scenario in talent reviews that we’ve even given it a name – upper right bias. That’s when managers place a strangely large percentage of their team in the high potential category, typically located in the upper right section of their potential tool. That upper right bias could be due to managers […]

Somewhere above the intersection of high performers and high potentials exists a rare and exceptionally capable type of talent. Their contributions are five times, ten times, up to fifty times larger than the average employee. They’re so rare that you might not have one in your company. We know that they’re often found in creative […]

Introduction You might assume that a company renowned for its HR solutions would have all the answers when it comes to managing talent. But Workday’s journey reveals an important truth: even the most sophisticated technology must be matched with a human-centric and holistic Talent Philosophy. This case study explores how Workday, in partnership with the […]

At Consolidated Snacks, the product management team meets quarterly to review market share and revenue data for its 18 salty snack products. The team uses this data to allocate their limited marketing budget. They have also created a handful of guidelines to ensure that their investment decisions consistently reflect the company’s product management philosophy. Among […]

We wrote the original version of “It’s the Mortar not the Bricks” in 2019 responding to a plethora of alternative HR operating models flooding into the marketplace. Our experience told us that it wasn’t HR’s operating model that was interfering in HR’s success. It was HR’s inability to operationalize their operating model. Since that time, […]

The pandemic created a fundamental shift in where people work, followed by incendiary disagreements about the tradeoffs of where people work. Those fires have been further fanned by popular media, business media, anti-business media, social media, TikTok, surveys and academic advocates. What’s been lacking is a fact-based discussion about what science and evidence say are […]

It’s the first morning of your new job. You’re excited because you’ve been selected to have coffee with the CEO to ask questions about the company. She has a reputation as being straightforward and a bit impatient, so you’ve thoroughly prepared for this conversation. The barista hands you and the CEO your coffees and you […]

Each year’s Harvard Medical School graduating class includes one doctor who is ranked at the bottom of their class. To be clear, this individual was the absolute worst performer in their four years at this highly esteemed institution. Every other Harvard Medical School graduate that year had performed better than they did. If you lined […]

We celebrate the progress that companies have made in talent management over the last 15 years. CEOs and Boards now better understand the value of high quality talent. CHROs have built-out talent practices and the talent-building capabilities of their HR team. Yet despite that progress, even the most progressive organizations aren’t seeing the talent management […]