At most companies, succession planning traditionally focuses on executives and roles deemed as critical. However, the reality today is that some of the most difficult positions to fill are not always executive roles; critical roles exist throughout organizations. While leadership succession is important, organizations must think about specialized and hard-to-fill roles across levels that can have a significant impact on business success.

As competition for talent continues to intensify across industries, an intentional approach to identifying internal talent, understanding employee potential and creating opportunities for growth before vacancies arise can be vital to an organization’s continued success.

For learning and development (L&D) leaders, talent reviews can serve as a valuable source of insight. Beyond identifying individual development needs, they help uncover broader skill gaps, emerging talent trends and common development opportunities across the organization. Those insights can then be used to inform training programs, career development initiatives and future workforce planning efforts.

With this in mind, Barge Design Solutions began Talent Talks in 2016 to support succession planning, encourage internal mobility and help employees prepare for future opportunities across the organization. Talent Talks are conducted at every level of the organization — from individual contributor roles to executives — allowing leaders to identify high performers across departments, recognize employees with growth potential and discuss business-critical positions regardless of title or hierarchy.

Building a More Intentional Approach to Talent Reviews

A program like Talent Talks requires support and investment from multiple departments and levels of an organization.

One of the most important lessons we’ve learned is the value of consistency. Before evaluations start, our HR team works with division managers to establish shared expectations and review guidelines related to performance, potential and the overall talent review process. Creating a common framework helps ensure employees are evaluated using the same definitions and standards, leading to more productive discussions and better talent decisions.

Another key principle is looking beyond an employee’s current role. Managers use a nine-box framework to evaluate both employee performance and future potential. In addition to current job performance, discussions focus on leadership potential, readiness for future roles, career aspirations and mobility across the organization. Looking beyond today’s responsibilities helps leaders understand where employees may be ready for greater challenges and increased responsibility.

Calibration is central to this process. Following initial assessments, managers participate in review sessions with HR and their peers to compare perspectives and challenge assumptions. These discussions help create a more complete picture of employee strengths, development areas and career aspirations. As those conversations progress, leaders gain a better picture of organizational strengths, emerging gaps and a narrowed list of employees who may be ready to take on new challenges.

The goal is not simply to place employees in boxes. Instead, the process is designed to encourage thoughtful discussion and create a more consistent view of talent across the organization.

The collaborative nature of Talent Talks allows leaders to share perspectives across disciplines and identify common development themes. While our teams may perform different types of work, joint discussions around career progression, readiness and effective development strategies often reveal trends that extend beyond a single department. For L&D professionals working in similar organizational structures, those insights can help them identify shared skill needs, design programs that support multiple functions and create more opportunities for cross-functional talent development.

Once talent review discussions are complete, the focus shifts from assessment to structured development plans. At Barge, those development plans are guided by our leadership framework, which is built on the belief that employees must first learn to lead themselves before leading others and, ultimately, the business. For employees identified as ready now or potentially ready within the next one to three years, leaders partner with HR and L&D to identify skills to develop, experiences needed and opportunities that support future growth. Together, they build development strategies designed to help employees become ready for future roles within the targeted time frame.

We’ve found that the most effective development occurs when employees experience the work, receive coaching on the work and gain the knowledge needed to perform the work successfully. Often this stage of the process is left to either the manager or the high performer to navigate; however, this is the most important step of the process. Without intentional development, organizations are simply identifying talent instead of preparing it for future opportunities.

Putting the Process into Practice

One of the biggest benefits of Talent Talks is that it helps us identify potential talent gaps and risks before they become hiring challenges.

In 2025, Barge identified project managers as a key area of focus. Project managers are in high demand across the architecture and engineering industry, as firms face an aging workforce and increasing competition for experienced talent. Rather than waiting until positions became difficult to fill, we used Talent Talks to identify employees with the potential to grow into future project management roles and began building a development cohort to help prepare them for those opportunities.

Through Talent Talks, we identified nine employees across roles and divisions with the potential to become future project managers and brought them together in a development cohort. Participants were selected based on manager recommendations, career development conversations and demonstrated success in project-related responsibilities. The initiative is currently underway as part of a multi-year effort to build an internal pipeline of project management talent.

We started the program with a custom assessment aligned with the necessary skills and qualifications for project managers to help us identify both technical and behavioral skills that needed to be developed. Common gaps include resource planning, financial planning and communication across matrixed teams and client environments. Participants receive individualized development plans tailored to their strengths and growth areas, followed by learning experiences to build core project management and leadership capabilities.

Development extends beyond formal coursework. Participants are assigned to smaller scale projects, shadow experienced project managers, receive ongoing coaching and work closely with managers to prepare for future project management responsibilities. Employees also have access to preparatory resources and courses should they choose to pursue Project Management Professional (PMP) certification as part of their development journey.

The program’s success will be measured through both employee development and project outcomes. As participants continue progressing toward project management roles, indicators such as project milestone achievement, timely project completion, client satisfaction and effective team communication practices help demonstrate readiness and growth to take on full-time project management roles.

The initiative reflects our broader commitment to developing employees from within. Rather than simply identifying talent, we are focused on helping people build the skills and experience needed for future opportunities.

Key Lesson: Make Talent Reviews Actionable

Recognizing employee potential is important, but it’s only the first step. Talent reviews can help organizations better understand employee strengths and career aspirations, but the real value comes from acting on those insights. As organizations navigate talent shortages and changing workforce demands, succession planning and employee development are becoming increasingly connected. Processes like Talent Talks help organizations understand where strengths exist today, while development efforts help employees build the skills and experiences needed to take on future opportunities.