CHROs and boards
Assessment that changes behaviour, not just files a report
Why most leadership assessment produces documents nobody uses, and what a board-usable readiness view looks like instead.
Anchor to the strategy in front of you
A competency model borrowed from a framework catalogue will assess leaders against a generic ideal. Anchoring to the organisation's actual ten-year ambition changes both the exercises and the conclusions, sometimes dramatically.
Separate ready-now from ready-later
Boards need three distinct answers: who can step up now, who could with development, and who is well placed where they are. Collapsing these into a single score is what makes assessment reports unusable for succession decisions.
Tenure is not readiness
In long-tenured organisations, service length quietly becomes the proxy for capability. Structured assessment exists mainly to break that substitution, which is uncomfortable and is the entire point.
Attach development to the finding
An assessment that ends with a report ends too early. Each finding should carry a named development priority, an owner, and a checkpoint, or the organisation will re-run the same assessment in three years and get the same answer.
