The 9 Box Grid

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?
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.
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 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
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.
Workhorses score high in performance but low in growth potential. They are the ones who
you should take care of in 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, 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).
Wrap-up
The 9 box grid can be a useful tool to manage all the employees in an organization. As such,
it can be used for performance management, talent management, and succession planning.
Pros and Cons of Using a 9-Box
When determining if it makes sense for your organization to take advantage of a 9-box grid to
use for succession planning there are a few things to consider.
 Pros
A 9-box grid is very easy to use. The tool in itself is simple to use and does not require a lot
of setup. Managers can easily complete the 9-box exercise as many times as they would like.
It helps to facilitate focused conversations between managers that may have never happened
otherwise. It is not always top of mind for managers and leaders to have serious
conversations around succession planning so completing the 9-box exercise periodically is a
good way to ensure it remains a priority. 
 It provides consistency in evaluation. Rather than relying on one-off conversations and
different succession planning approaches, using a 9-box makes sure succession planning data
is consistent throughout the organization. Employees can be analyzed fairly and in one
centralized location. Used in conjunction with the Performance Values Matrix, you can
ensure that the employees direct manager’s perspective is taken into account. 
 Cons
Managers’ perspectives can sometimes be subjective. We are all human. We all have
different backgrounds and perspectives that lead us to make decisions, especially when
managing people. This will inevitably lead to subjectivity. However, the purpose of doing
the 9-box exercise is to create a model to help facilitate a conversation around succession
planning. The data doesn’t have to be the end all be all, it’s a tool and it helps get the
conversation started. 
High performance from individuals does not always translate to success in a
management position.  This is less of a con and more of something to keep in the back of
your head as you complete the 9-box exercise. Not all individual contributors will have the
aptitude to move into management roles. The high performing ideal team player may not
make the best manager, and that is okay. In fact, they may actually prefer to be an individual
contributor. Managers also need to take into account the employee’s personal vision when
completing the exercise.