The Paradox of High Potentials - Ron Ashkenas - Harvard Business Review

Some thoughts I may have about the companies that are struggling to keep their best talents is summarized in this very good article from the Harvard Business Review blog:


The Paradox of High Potentials - Ron Ashkenas - Harvard Business Review


While reading it, I recognize a lot of situations I've met in different companies I've worked for in the past. Bright people get fed-up and leave, while a company can perform only thanks to over-achievers. How could they possibly conceive to outperform by not keeping the out-performers in their headcount?
Too many under-performers at key roles is for me the root of the current crisis.
What worries me is that it seems to be a common practice in big companies nowadays and that lead me to think that they prepare to fail if they continue that way. The question is not if they will fail but when.


Concerns about frustrating under-performers of a team when they decide to promote high potentials is a complete non sense for me. A company who want to perform should not bother to burden themselves with those average performers. Leave them to be hired by your competitors instead of the good performers !


It reminds me a real case: IBM in the 80's had their European headquarters near Brussels. A friend of mine tole be once he applied to a job there at this time. He explained that a mandatory step into the recruitment process was an IQ test. They used to select only the pest performers to this test. They were bang on target because there are more high potentials among high IQs. At this time being IBM was a star performer on the market and my friend really enjoyed working there, among his lookalikes. 
The problems began when a red-party local labour minister decided that this kind of test was too discriminatory and therefore should be scrapped in every company, on the sake of Equality of Chances to access a job. A while after, IBM had to rely on other less efficient ways of recruiting best potentials and they ended up with hiring complete jerks. That was the reason why my friend left this company. And since then, IBM has lost a lot of market share in all the markets they used to be leaders. 


My conclusion is: to avoid to frustrate jerks by favourising the best potential of a team, just avoid hiring jerks. Get better recruitment processes to only target high potentials before they join the company. 
Much easier.