HiPo: grow your own or hire from outside?

At some point a growing company runs into a rather unpleasant situation.

A new head of production, head of a business line or director is needed. And suddenly it turns out there is practically nobody inside the company to put in that position.

An external search begins. It takes time, a strong candidate is expensive, and they still need to understand the business and fit into the team. And there is no guarantee they will still be there in six months.

Yet the person who could have taken that position may have been working inside the company for several years. Nobody simply prepared them systematically for the next level.

What HiPo means

This is where the topic of HiPo comes in.

HiPo (high potential), put simply, means employees with high potential. People who are capable, over time, of taking on significantly more complex tasks and greater responsibility.

There is an important point here: today's best employee will not necessarily become a good manager tomorrow.

For example, the best engineer may understand the equipment perfectly and be completely unable to manage people. The strongest salesperson may post outstanding personal results and be unable to build a sales system for a team of 50.

So high performance and high potential are different things.

Does a company need HiPo?

In my view, yes — if the business is growing, new units are appearing, the number of management layers is increasing, or there are positions where losing the person could seriously hurt the business.

But I would not start the project by drawing up a "talent list".

It is far more useful to first ask the business a few questions.

• Where is the company heading in the next 2–3 years?
• Which managers and specialists will that growth require?
• Which positions are critical for the business?
• What happens if the head of production, the chief engineer, the commercial director or another key manager leaves tomorrow?
• Is there at least one person inside the company who could replace them?
• And if there is, what do they need to be given today so that in a year or two they are genuinely ready?

Then what emerges is not just a fashionable HR program, but a proper system for working with future managers.

An example

A section head today could potentially become head of production in two years.

But so far they lack financial thinking, experience of managing a large number of people and an understanding of adjacent processes.

So the company's task is not to send them to yet another leadership course.

You can give them a bigger section, involve them in a productivity improvement project, teach them to work with a budget, give them experience of managing change, and gradually increase the scale of their responsibility.

Two years later the company gets not just an employee who "completed a training course", but a potentially prepared candidate for a business-critical position.

HiPo, talent pool and successors

This is where HiPo naturally connects with the talent pool and succession planning.

In essence, a company should know three things:

1. Who is critical for us today?
2. Who is potentially able to take on more complex positions tomorrow?
3. What must we do now so that these people are really ready?

In general, I think a modern HiPo programme should be exactly like this.

Not "we picked 20 talented employees and called them the talent pool".

But a very practical system for reducing people risks and preparing people for the future growth of the business.

And I would not even start with the question "Who are our HiPos?"

But with a much more uncomfortable one:

"If five key managers leave the company tomorrow, whom can we realistically put in their places?"

The answer usually shows very quickly whether the company needs a system for working with potential or not yet.