The 9 Box Grid: A Practitioner’s

Guide
The 9 box grid is a well-known tool for talent management and succession planning. In
this practitioner’s guide, we will explain each box in the 9 box grid, talent management
action steps per category, and how this framework can be used in Excel for advanced
reporting.

What is the 9 box grid? A definition

The 9 box grid is a well-known talent management tool in which employees are divided
into nine groups, based on their performance and potential.

When assessing employee performance, managers often pay attention to two things.
First, how well they perform today, and second, how well they are likely to perform in
the future (i.e. their growth potential). 

For example, hardworking employees who do well in their role but have little growth
potential are great to have in your team, as well as Allstars who perform well and have
great potential. However, low performing employees with low potential will require a lot
of management attention and are unlikely to improve. These require a different
approach.

The 9-box grid provides a framework that helps to manage all employees in an
organization. In the next sections, we will explore how to assess performance and
potential, after which we will explain how the 9-box grid can be used as a performance
management tool.

 
9 HR Analytics
Case Studies
Creating a 9 Box Grid
When we go about creating a 9-box grid, we go through three steps. Assessing
performance, assessing potential, and bringing it together.

Step 1. Assessing Performance

The nine-box consists of three performance categories: low, moderate, and high. During
their performance appraisal, employees are scored on this performance scale.
There are many different ways to score performance and each organization has
different nuances. As an example, we propose the following structure:

 Low performance. Employee does not match the requirements of their job and fails
their individual targets.
 Moderate performance. Employee partially matches the requirements of their job and
their individual targets.
 High performance. Employee fully meets the requirements of their job and their
individual targets.
The advantage of this approach is that it sticks to the job requirements as defined in the
organization’s job structure, and it relates to the person’s targets. Some organizations
may have less defined job structures and work with more personal targets – in that
case, more emphasis can be put on assessing target achievement.

Some authors propose the use of a four-point scale. Managers usually dislike giving
negative feedback. A three-point scale makes it very easy to put someone in a
‘moderate performance’ category even though objectively they should have been
categorized as ‘low performance’. A four-point scale forces the manager to make a
more accurate choice (either above or below average).

Step 2. Assessing Potential

The other axis of the 9 box grid is potential. Potential should also be scored during the
performance appraisal and often falls into the following categories.

 Low potential | working at full potential. Employee is working at full potential and is
not expected to improve, either because they are at maximum capacity or because of a
lack of motivation. 
 Moderate potential | develop in current role. Employee has the potential to further
develop within their current role. This can be in terms of performance, but also in terms
of expertise. 
 High potential | eligible for promotion. Employee is eligible for promotion, either
immediately, or within two to three years. 
The benefit of communicating that someone is at ‘full potential’ rather than at ‘low
potential’ is that the former is less discouraging. We do want people to have a growth
mindset and associate extra effort with improvements in performance so there is some
tact required from the manager when it comes to communicating this. For this reason,
some companies decide not to communicate this potential score to employees.
Similarly, employees who are eligible for promotion should be careful in how this is
communicated. There may not be any senior-level job openings that are required to
fulfill this. 

There is some correlation between performance and potential but there are cases in
which someone who has low performance may be eligible for a promotion in 2-3 years.
Take a management trainee fresh from university. This person scores high on capacity
tests but has very little work experience. They may be low performance but have such
great potential that they are expected to grow fast enough to be promotable in 2-3
years.

Some companies split up promotability and potential into two separate metrics, where
potential is the growth potential of the employee, while the time until the next promotion
is an indication of when a person is ready to be promoted.

Step 3. Bringing it together

The next step is to plot performance and potential on a 3×3 grid, resulting in the 9 box
grid. The brilliance of this grid is that for each box in the grid, different talent
management techniques can be used.

The 9 box grid explained

Let’s go over the different categories in the 9 box grid step by step and look how
our talent management policies will differ per step.
Bad hires

In the bottom left corner of the 9 box grid, there are the employees who score low on
performance and low on potentials. There are different names for them, which include
talent risk, bad hire, and icebergs. Some even go as far as labeling them as ‘useless
workers’ who need to be ‘fired immediately’. 

I prefer the term bad hires – you should not have hired these people in the first place
but now that you have, you need to deal with them quickly but fairly.

If these bad hires stay too long, they will become icebergs, threatening the viability of
your organization. This is because investing in these employees will take away time,
money, and other resources from employees with mote potential to growth. Their work
quality will also set lower standards for colleagues, who will spend more time on
cleaning up the mess of bad performing colleagues instead of adding value to the
organization.

Action plan
1. Identify personal roadblocks that may cause the low performance and lack of growth.
However, be careful to not over-invest in these people as that would be unfair to the rest
of the employees who do perform well.
2. Sit with the individual to see if there is a more appropriate assignment where their skills
are better utilized.
 3. If the first two options don’t bring quick wins, you should create an exit plan together
where you help the person find a role that better suits their skills outside of your
organization.
If bad hires are a common phenomenon in your organization, review your talent
acquisition and your selection process.
Up or out

The next category in the 9 box grid is the up or out category. They include the medium
performers with low potentials (up or out grinders) and the medium potentials with low
performance (up or out dilemma’s).

The grinders are medium performers but they do a good enough job to not fire them.
This makes them a challenging group. They are low potentials so investing time and
money in training them will not pay off. The best approach is to create a personal
improvement plan. With the creation of this plan, you emphasize that their performance
is mediocre, you help them understand where their points of improvement are, and you
give them the opportunity to work on it. If this is not paying off and they are not moving
into the high-performance group, you will have to make a difficult decision, hence: up or
out.
The dilemmas have some potential to be great but they are not performing. Here the
question is why they are not performing. Here you go through the same process as
before and try to identify what causes their mediocre performance. Are they new hires
and did they have a bad onboarding experience, or maybe they don’t understand what
is expected from them? As an intervention, you can enroll them in peer coaching or
other mentoring programs. If this is not working and they are not progressing into a
higher performance category, you will have to make a difficult decision.
Action plan
1. Create a personal improvement plan by going over personal roadblocks and skills
required for the role that need to be worked on by the employee. Provide measurable
expectations and clearly define what good performance will look like. The employee
should clearly know what is expected of them.
2. Check in every month and evaluate progress on the plan. Always document these
meetings well as this will help you make a better decision and the employee is likely to
benefit from a structured plan and feedback. 
3. If performance does not improve within 6 months to a year, you should create an exit
plan together where you help the person find a role that better suits their need outside of
your organization.
Workhorses and dysfunctional geniuses

In the top bottom right corner and top left corner, we find people who excel in only one
element in the 9 box.

The workhorses score high in performance but low in growth potential. They are the
ones who you should take care of in your organization. They perform well and have a
good work mentality. However, they don’t have much potential for growth. This means
that you should keep them happy and reward them but be careful of over-rewarding
them. This will create a golden cage – something we’ve seen in the global banking
sector. People sat comfortably in their role and had no incentive to switch jobs and
develop themselves further, making them susceptible to recent process automation and
digitization of banking processes.
The difficulty with workhorses is that in today’s world their work is bound to change at
some point, and they may not be able to grow with their role. Imagine someone in the
‘90s who was great at their job but didn’t want to learn how to operate a computer…
Some would argue that a growth mindset is key to being a good employee in today’s
world – and they would have a point.

Also, don’t promote these people to roles with extra responsibility. This would invoke
the Peter principle, first identified by Dr. Laurence J. Peter. According to Peter, “every
employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”. If someone performs well but has
little growth potential, keep them happy and in their current role.

Action plan
1. Keep workhorses happy
2. Analyze how their work will change in the future and help them prepare in so far as
possible.
3. Raise salaries nominally but be careful with substantial raises and bonuses. Do not
promote.
The dysfunctional geniuses are on the other end of the spectrum. They score high in
potential but low in performance. An example could be a management trainee from a
prestigious university. They haven’t learned the ropes yet but they are eager to learn.
Here it is key to continuously track their performance – they should grow and increase
their performance rapidly.
Action plan
1. Give the dysfunctional genius time to develop but monitor their performance. You are not
only looking for improvements but for stable, solid performance. Keep in mind that it is
easy to improve if performance is bad; if they are high in potential, they should be able
to perform at a medium to high level within six to twelve months.
2. Communicate clear expectations for their current role so they know what is expected of
them.
3. Communicate that you believe in their potential but also that they should improve their
current performance.
4. If they still score low in performance a year onward, you should create an exit plan
together where you help the person find a role that better suits their skills outside of your
organization.
Future stars

The next three groups we labeled as ‘future stars’. They already make up the core of
your workforce while also having the potential to grow into more advanced roles.

Your high potentials score high in potential and average on performance. Oftentimes,

this is because they haven’t had time to fully grow in the role yet. The priority here is to
move them to the right in the 9-box grid so they are in the top-right corner. The
approach and action plan is similar to your core players.
Your core players are the ones who are reliable performers and who also have the
potential to grow further in their current roles. Your main performance management
priority is to bring these people to the right of the 9-box grid, where they score high on
performance. The steps here are similar to those for your high potentials.
Action steps
1. Ensure that expectations and role requirements are clear.
2. Give juniors in new roles the time to develop their performance to the highest level
3. Consistently praise accomplishments, good performance, and initiatives that help to
advance organizational goals. Also, monitor their performance and have regular sit-
downs to ensure that they are still happy in their role.
4. Expose them to short-term job rotation schemes to expose them to other experiences
that will help them to perform better or job enlargement by adding activities that fit the
employee.
5. Enable them with peer coaching by a high-performing employee or professional
coaching to solve any personal or professional issues that hold the person back
(performance barriers).
 6. Provide these professionals with classroom training and on-the-job learning
opportunities that help them develop the skills that they are good at or bring skills that
hold them back to a higher level.
Your high performers are already in a good place. They contribute to your organization
so the key strategy here is to keep them happy and engaged, while ensuring that they
will be up for the job not just now but also for years to come. If the high performer is
ambitious and looking to move upward in the organization, you will want to improve their
potential with different interventions.

Action steps
1. Keep high performers happy and engaged. Regularly check in with them and appreciate
the work they do.
2. Not everyone needs to be a star. If your high performer is happy in their current role and
does not want a promotion or extra responsibility, that is also a great outcome. It is not
feasible to promote the entire organization every few years so this may be a preferred
outcome.
3. Give them time to grow. If someone is not yet at full potential, it may mean that they
need to grow more into their current role before they can move on to the next.
4. Leverage techniques like job rotation and give them challenging assignments to expose
them to different parts of the business. This will build their business acumen and
prepare them for a broader leadership role.
5. Find them a mentor who can help them grow and fulfill their ambition and provide
training (and upskilling) opportunities.
Stars
The stars are your high performers who are also capable to take on new roles. These
are your A-players and most valuable employees. They also play a critical role in
succession planning.

Action plan
1. Give your stars challenging assignments – they are the most likely of all your employees
to pull it off. Examples are important internal projects, turnaround projects, or more
external opportunities in start-ups or spin-off companies.
2. Check in with them regularly and assess if they are still happy in their current role.
Ensure that you spot early signs of dissatisfaction. Praise them lavishly and ensure that
they feel appreciated for the contributions they make to the company.
3. Provide mentorship with more senior members of the organization
4. Create networking opportunities with other stars and with senior members of the
organization. These opportunities help to build a network between your top performers
and your senior leadership.
5. If they are interested in it, roles in external boards and committees could incentivize
them, raise their public profile, and provide an interesting challenge and networking
opportunity for them.
6. Reward them and ensure that they receive competitive compensation. These employees
contribute the most to your organization and should be rewarded accordingly.

9 box grid talent management

In the previous section we have explained how 9 box grid talent management can be
applied. One of the key advantages of the 9 box grid is that it makes talent investment
decisions easier. 

Select International, an employee screening company, offers an interesting perspective.

They propose that your total talent management and development budget should be
allocated based on one’s position in the 9 box grid.
If you had to invest $100, you should divide it among the different talent categories as is
shown in the figure above. Bad hires who occupy the left bottom corner should be
invested in the least, while the stars in the right top corner should get the most
resources. 

This also makes sense from a resource allocation and strategic perspective – as a
business you will want to invest in the (human) resources that provide the largest return
and that create the biggest competitive advantage. Investing in bad hires would take
away resources from good and top performers.

This does mean that not everyone is equal – a message that is not appreciated by all
HR professionals. We must accept that some people fit our company culture better than
others, and not everyone is equally suited for the same role.
9 box grid for succession planning
In a similar vein, the 9 box grid can be used for succession planning as well.
Succession planning should focus on your stars, who score high in performance and
high in potential. These are the employees who will build the future of your organization.

We dive into this topic in much more detail in our full guide on succession planning.
The 9 box grid is a tool that helps in the identification of leadership talent. The
leadership talent is then groomed for more senior leadership positions through
leadership development, coaching, mentoring, regular 360-degree feedback, and other
feedback methods.
The stars are the key employees in the succession matrix, where critical roles are
mapped and different top employees are mapped in terms of their suitability for a role.
When these roles become vacant, it means that there is talent ready to fill these newly
opened roles.

9 Box grid Excel template

In our HR data analyst course, we take an employee database and put them into a
performance management grid. Although it is a great exercise to train your Excel skills,
we do recommend the use of specialized HR performance management software that
has this function integrated. However, for advanced reporting Excel may still be a good
tool.
In this overview, you see the employee data base on the left (containing 3143
employees) and their respective potential and performance scores. The pivot table in
the bottom right corner shows the performance – potential distribution and the bubble
chart on the top right shows the distribution with the size of the bubbles representing the
size of the population.
This Excel visualization enables addition visual encoding. For example, if you were the
plot development budget on the 9 box grid and represent this by the color value of the
bubbles, the overview could look like the following picture.
As you can see, there are some discrepancies in how budget is allocated. Low
performing employees with medium potential are given more budget per person
compared to low performing employees with high potential. This should be the other
way around.

You can download the full 9 box grid Excel template with these figures here (note: the
download starts immediately).