The 9-box is a conundrum. On the surface, it offers a straightforward way to assess talent and build a succession pipeline. However, despite its popularity as the go-to employee evaluation framework, everyone who’s used it knows it comes with major limitations.

Here, we’ll cover the top inherent issues with the traditional 9-box, and we’ll introduce tools and tips for improving the framework and your company’s outcomes. 

1. Talent reviews are highly susceptible to human biases

One of the biggest challenges with the 9-box framework is the subjective nature of the evaluations. The framework consists of two key inputs, performance and potential, and the latter is problematic. What does “potential” really mean? This is a question many organizations struggle to define when using the 9-box grid. Is potential about leadership aptitude? Technical skills? Culture fit? The framework does not make these distinctions, leaving the term open to interpretation. And when the decider of “potential” is a manager—with their own implicit biases and preferences when it comes to their team—it adds layers to the already conflated variable. 

Perceptions of potential perpetuate equity issues in the workplace, and labeling low potential is only likely to exacerbate that. For example, if a manager carries an implicit bias about leaders needing to be assertive, they may not rate a talented introverted employee as having high potential. This could lead to limited mobility for that employee and missed an opportunity for the company to retain a top performer who would have been deemed high potential had they reported to a different manager. These issues may also extend to other factors, such as gender and race.

Solution: HR and leadership teams enable consistent and effective evaluation through multiple efforts. Examples include: 

• Develop rubrics with criteria based on the organization’s strategic objectives and core values that give managers a model to guide their decisions. 
• Offer implicit bias training for all managers participating in talent reviews. 
• Consider eliminating the “potential” axis altogether in favor of one or more of the new 9-box models, as we’ll discuss more in the next section. 

2. Oversimplification of the 9-box’s use cases

Reducing an employee’s entire contribution to just two factors—performance and potential—is an oversimplification that overlooks the complexity of talent management. There are times when the tool is used for compensation increases,, and others when it is used for succession planning. These two simple variables of performance and potential are not optimal inputs as the only two variables to determine such critical decisions from promotion decisions to bonus outcomes. Adjusting the axis lines to best align to the use case at hand is critical in ensuring that the tool is working for you and not against you. 

Solution: At SignalFire, we open-sourced three great alternatives that you can implement depending on your business needs. There are dozens of combinations that can serve companies’ needs, and we recommend HR leaders treat talent reviews like a product and managers as the users. 

Start with the outcome in mind: what are we solving for with this exercise? When you have the answer, selecting the two best axes to drive the right outcomes is a critical, and overlooked part of most 9-box exercises. 

3. Succession reviews don’t account for employees’ career plans 

Companies spend a great deal of time calibrating teams against the 9-box and then utilize the exercise to inform critical actions such as merit cycles, succession plans, and more. That said, most do this in a vacuum without our other key data at their disposal. Say, for example, you are looking to build succession plans for top performers only based on performance and potential. Do you know their intent to stay as well? Do you survey employees bi-annually to understand intent to stay with the company, and is this data aligned to your action plans for 9-box? Typically, these exercises are disjointed, sometimes being led by different subteams within HR. 

It’s time human resources triangulate multichannel data sources and start to introduce the capabilities of AI to inform their talent management actions. We now have access to people analytics tools like Praisidio, Included.AI (both SignalFire portfolio companies), and Knoetic that provide data-based recommendations for HR and leadership teams using real behaviors and patterns of your employee base, which are generally more accurate indicators than survey behavior or manager assumption. 

We don’t recommend ditching the 9-box or surveys in favor of AI-driven people analytics. Rather, we recommend considering multiple data sources in an integrated way for a stronger, more informed action plan. Imagine a world where succession plans are being formed on the basis of performance and business need, strengthened with survey data about which managers have the happiest and most engaged teams as well as whose Zoom and Slack data patterns infer they may be less engaged at work. We are living in times with the technological capability to use leading indicators to transform HR from a reactive support system to true strategic partners with unprecedented analytics savvy.

Conclusion

The 9-box is broken, but that doesn’t mean you need to throw it away. It can serve a great purpose as a tool within the broader talent management toolbox if you consider these three additional strategies:

1. HR leaders as the new product leaders: Take a hard look at the business outcome your company is working toward and align the axis points for the use case. 
2. Educate and enable managers: Beyond the common unconscious bias trainings, equip managers for greatness by creating common definitions for buzzwords like “merit,” “potential,” and “culture fit” that give them the confidence to make the best decisions for the business.
3. Become a data powerhouse and earn your spot at the table: There’s so much data at our fingertips—and the key is triangulation—that talent review is less of a check-the-box and more of a 360-degree view of an employee’s total picture.

Do these, and you’ll reach more equitable outcomes that motivate all your employees to perform their best and stay at your business for years to come.  

Try SignalFire’s modernized 9-box templates to improve your talent reviews. 

Heather Doshay is a Partner at SignalFire.