When selecting an employee for promotion, an organisation needs to think carefully about how this will affect and challenge the business. Management consultant John Pope reveals the factors to take into consideration when moving staff up the career ladder.

Organisations do not always think carefully enough when choosing someone to be promoted. Most of us will have seen the damage caused by promoting an employee to a position they aren’t capable of succeeding in – A previously good worker doing a good job now unhappy and floundering. Of course, there will always be some mistakes due to misjudgements as well as to change of circumstances, but we can improve the success rate.

Promotion adds status, money, extends the individual’s network and can be seen as a springboard to further advancement. As such, it is not to be offered lightly.

It also provides an opportunity to make changes. Some of those changes may have been resisted by the previous holder, some of them may not have been possible. It may also be an opportunity to substantially improve performance. It should stimulate a review of the existing job, it will bring a fresh mind to bear. It can lead to unexpected results.

Unless the promotion is concerned with just filling an established and clearly defined vacancy with one of a number of possible replacements, and the choice is only between which individual is best suited, there are some important questions:

Important questions when selecting for promotion

1. Do you want the job to change?
In most organisations the work done in a job does not correspond well with either the formal job specification and list of duties or the needs of the organisation. Review the job with the current or previous holder and discover what is really important. Also find out what else should be done, how different aspects of the job may be redistributed, the role changed, the scope enlarged, or sometimes, reduced.

Look at the job in context with the business plan, the challenges over the next few years and the likely shape of the business. No business plan, no ideas about the future? You’re in trouble and condemned to losing the opportunity to make a managed change. The good news, of course, is that a replacement of real calibre will discover this quickly and make the changes, probably without your guidance. And serve you right.

2. Do you want the job to stay the same?
If you’re sure, then all you have to do is to find out the qualities and experience needed to achieve success. That may take some time, especially if you did not understand what made the present holder so successful. Review the critical aspects of the job and how the present holder gets results. It is better to be on the safe side, since the current holder may have views about the future which have not got through to management.

3. Selection
Who could be considered? In many cases there will be an obvious choice, sometimes as a result of there being an established promotion path, sometimes because an individual has stood in for the current holder from time to time. Sometimes there will be an expectation that an individual will get the job – so be careful. Remember that you have an opportunity to experiment which may not come again for some time. Just because you are replacing an unsatisfactory sales manager does not mean that you have to pick from the current sales-force. I know one organisation where the production manager was so critical of the sales force and its performance that he was given the job of becoming the sales and marketing manager. His qualities of management and organisation – sadly lacking in the existing sales manager – were just what was needed to get the sales performance dramatically improved.

When you look at a job and the qualities and experience you require in the individual, probe carefully. Challenge some of the usual assumptions. The more high level the job is, the more you’re likely to be making your selection on the basis of attitude and character than on the technical knowledge of the individual.

4. Capability
Do you want to know what they can do or what they could do? Previous results tell you something about what people can do and this can help when the new job is similar. Look also at their achievements outside their usual run of work, especially when this has been done on their own initiative. Even then circumstances will be different. Don’t look backwards; look forward and assess the qualities of an individual in relation to the challenges. What individuals could do depends not only on their knowledge, their experience but also on their desire and drive. What evidence could you find to show that an individual you are considering has the necessary enthusiasm and ideas and also the ability to manage the changes which will be needed?

5. Assessment
You are lucky, there are a number of possible candidates for a senior level position – one in which they will have to achieve high business performance. You will have weeded out all those who did not have a good track record in their annual performance reviews. Some of them will have been ‘noticed’ by more senior managers, some may have been recommended. You are not going to look at any poor performers. How are you going to test them, what are you going to do with those who are subsequently rejected? You might need to look at them again when another vacancy crops up. You might want to think of having a pool of proven good managers who could be considered.

Alternatively, an assessment centre can give you a better view of the character and capability of a number of people. It can help identify those who stand out from their colleagues; it can also pick out those who have not yet had a chance to show their capability. It can give you a bigger pool to fish in and allow you to identify the best fish.

But it must be well-designed and be much more than an exercise in validating the series of annual performance reviews in your files or checking their rating against your competency framework. It should test individuals in a range of unfamiliar tasks and in working at a higher level than usual. It should identify the strengths they will bring to the new job; it should also identify any weaknesses or lack of experience against which you will guard against when they are in the new job. It should expose those being assessed to their colleagues and senior managers over sufficient time and under different, difficult circumstances. Only by that can you pick out the fish who can swim when the tide is strongly against them.

6. Career implications
You are a good employer. You have told your people about the progress which they could make in the organisation. You have used the word ‘career’ to them. Think ahead. Where is this job likely to lead to? Is there a next step? How will this promotion give an individual the experience which will be invaluable at a higher level? Before you start worrying about the prospect of creating ‘Crown Princes’; you should look at possible career paths. There will be some posts which are highly desirable stages in a career path. In some organisations an individual cannot get to the highest levels without having excellent reports in a number of well-defined positions. In a big organisation these stages are well documented. Even in a smaller organisation there will be an expectation that an individual going towards the top must have spent time earning the opportunity for progress, and have a range of line management experience as well as functional or specialist experience.

‘Career ladders’ are no longer common – organisations change more quickly. But there are still a number of steps in a ladder for an individual to climb before arriving at a stage where there is a choice of other ladders to take. Some ladders may lead to dead ends, some eventually to the very highest levels. Consider where the promotion could take the individual and the qualities needed at the next stages. You will not be able to sell a job which is career limiting to an ambitious manager you really want to keep.

7. Bound to fail
Promoting too late is probably worse in most cases than promoting too soon. Most individuals facing a new job challenge will not be sufficiently well equipped to perform as they should. An individual selected for promotion too soon is a risk. A risk to you since a failure is expensive as well as being embarrassing; a risk to the individual since it may end a promising career, though there are some organisations which take the view that the very best managers will have been people who have had failures – sometimes spectacular – and have bounced back – As was the case of the national manager of an International chemical company who failed dramatically in South Africa, was brought back to do a staff job at group headquarters, but fought his way back, persevered and eventually became the group chief executive.

Finally…
‘You know more than you think you do’ – the opening remarks of Dr Spock’s ‘Baby and Childcare’. However, you only know it if you take a broad view of those you are considering and look systematically at what you do know and what you could find out. Yes, selection for promotion does have risks, but so does everything else. You can identify the risks and improve the success rate. And remember also that a promotion creates another vacancy and the same rules apply.