We have worked on various aspects that would further expand Strategic Workforce Planning and Recruitment boundaries.  One of the leaders requested us to look into High potential candidate acquisition and High Potential talent retention.  This is an essential aspect of talent planning.  Take, for example, Disney.    After the Lion King was released in 1994, eventually grossing 952 million dollars worldwide, the studio began its slow decline.  The bulk of the talent that worked in Lion King was still there.  It took Disney some serious effort to bring back a High potential executive Kevin Mayer.  Kevin Mayer diagnosed that new talent-hiring between 1994 and 2006 was shockingly low (innovators and high-potential leaders).  Kevin Mayer went for a spree of acquisitions – Pixar, Marvel, Lucas, and so on.  In many scenarios, Kevin Mayer valued talent more than the assets that were brought in.  Disney emerged from its creative slump.

Focusing on High Potential Talent is very hard but a very must activity for HR leaders.  It is important to note that even if you end up getting one key engineer or one key leader, the company takes a different growth trajectory.  In 2009, both companies Tesla and Fisker Karma, were on an even setting, and many companies were betting in favor of Fisker becoming the market leader for Electric vehicles.  Tesla ran into severe issues in vehicle design in 2009.  In 2009, Elon Musk identified one of the world’s top Vehicle Engineers Peter Rawlinson from Lotus Cars.  This move paid off big time and put Tesla on the right course.  Fisker Karma failed in vehicle design.

Predicting a hire from a high potential standpoint is a holy grail.  All Recruiters aspire to hire the best of the best and expect everyone to be of high potential.  Assessing whether a resource has significant potential from outside is hard.  You are making a prediction based on the data gathered through resumes and interviews.  Niels Bohr, the Nobel laureate in Physics and father of the atomic model, is quoted as saying, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future!” This quote serves as a warning for all of us when Predicting a key outcome. At best, we can look at a framework with these five components to minimize our error in prediction