Credibility

HR groupies and regular readers alike will not be surprised to learn that former top BBC personnel operative Lucy Adams has now washed her hands of The Nine Box Grid.

This is not the title of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche (though it could be developed). It's a way of judging the abilities and potential of your key staff by putting them in boxes. An external lecture, preserved here, gives details of how it was applied in the BBC from 2010, to some 3,000 staff. Spookily, Lucy led BBC HR from 2009 to 2014.

Now Lucy, leading consultancy Disruptive HR, says it's "a complicated grid that is inaccurate and doesn’t add value. Not a great use of time at best and at worst, yet another HR activity that fails to add value and destroys our credibility."