One of the many threats to an organisation’s ability to compete and grow in the future is the inability to place the right people in the right jobs at the right time. It is very true that missteps in strategic finance, marketing or operational decisions can place an organisation in far greater peril. But behind those decisions are people who have been selected, developed or promoted based on what often prove to be subjective and unreliable assessment practices. Indeed, any line manager who has experienced the business consequences of poor people decisions will testify to the value of creating a reliable and consistent way to measure or predict employee performance. Perhaps it was the sales account executive promoted to regional sales manager based on positive reviews from bosses or peers, but who failed to effectively lead his or her culturally-diverse staff – largely because their promotion was tied to measures of past success in the previous role, but not readiness for a new and different leadership role. Maybe it was a decision to retain or make redundant certain leaders during a corporate merger based solely on recommendations from politically motivated managers who knew them best, rather than on accurate, objective data. Or likely it was a series of hiring decisions pegged only to assessments that measured candidates’ ability to do the work, but discounted or overlooked cultural or job fit.
