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Focus Finder Revisited

The table below takes some of the key corporate benefits we identified in the Focus Finder and provides indicative examples of how an organisation might seek to achieve the specified benefit.

Substantive Corporate Benefits

Benefit	Description	Possible area of focus for scheme	Possible features of scheme
Influence organisational strategy	Using intelligence from the talent pool to feed into strategic planning	Deliberately wide range of roles to ensure diverse views. Roles that are very close to customers, or that in other ways give signals about the direction of the business	Two-way process, with feedback from scheme participants as important as assessment of their potential
Having people ready to step into key roles if the current holders become unavailable	Small number of key roles, for example where role holders are approaching pension age	Very clear role definitions and targeted assessment and development, with scheme aiming to have specific successors in place and trained up	Very clear role definitions and targeted assessment and development, with scheme aiming to have specific successors in place and trained up
Actively setting out to ‘fast-track’ people from under-represented groups	Range of senior roles in which equalities data shows there is clear under-representation of certain groups	Positive action development opportunities; addressing bias in selection and cultural barriers; involving scheme participants in discussion of organisational change	Positive action development opportunities; addressing bias in selection and cultural barriers; involving scheme participants in discussion of organisational change
Identifying roles which make a difference to the organisation and which competitors do not have, to help the organisation put resources into maintaining what makes it different	Key academic or technical roles in areas the organisation wishes to promote/support	Research development for academics; mentoring; internal peer-review schemes	Research development for academics; mentoring; internal peer-review schemes
Widening the conversation about what the organisation needs and how it will be identified and developed, thus improving its capacity for self-criticism and improvement	Same as for 'influence corporate strategy' above	Same as for 'influence corporate strategy' above	Same as for 'influence corporate strategy' above
Improving internal candidates’ capability to fill key roles and, by defining the roles more clearly, attracting good external candidates too	One or two levels of senior roles, clearly defined, and all possible feeder roles, broadly defined	Clear role definitions; robust competency assessment of ‘feeder’ roles; trusted feedback	Clear role definitions; robust competency assessment of ‘feeder’ roles; trusted feedback
Increasing the level of interest in roles such as heads of academic departments, which may be hard to fill because they are seen as unwelcome distractions	Identified roles, and all possible feeder roles, broadly defined	Involving existing postholders; soliciting participants’ views on the roles and how they can be redefined	Involving existing postholders; soliciting participants’ views on the roles and how they can be redefined
The organisation may have certain roles in which there is a wide variation between the top and bottom performers	Identified roles plus feeder roles	Emphasis on role definition and assessment	Emphasis on role definition and assessment

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