How to Identify Future Leaders with the 9 Box Talent Matrix

The 9 box talent matrix may or may not be a familiar concept to you. But it’s about to become one of your best friends when it comes to identifying future company leaders! This open-source, simple-to-use system lets you put a proven method to the madness, and aids in forecasting the steps that are necessary to place a specific employee into another specific role within your organization within a specific timeframe. Let’s break the 9 box talent matrix down for a minute, so you can see how it can all come together for your company.

Identify Your Goal

This simple grid of nine boxes lets you compare the X axis to the Y axis. Factors that can be evaluated include the talents of an individual vs their needs, performance vs potential, compliance vs capability, or any other aspects. Once you determine what you’ll be evaluating, and identify the goal of the matrix comparison, you’ll need to collect data to evaluate against.

Gather Data

Start by gathering as much historical information as possible, which can be collected from annual reviews, job descriptions, self-assessments, and feedback from any meetings you or managers may have had with individuals where future goals were discussed.

Populate Your Grid

Based on the data you’ve collected, you can then compute the scores of individuals and compare them side-by-side within the grid of nine boxes, using whatever thresholds you deem fair and constructive.

Automate This Process

While you can continue this process manually, we recommend investing in HR technology with succession capabilities for future updating with new data as is comes in. If you’d like to learn more about succession planning software, contact us today. We’ll get your 9 box talent matrixes all squared up - pun intended.