By John Gibbons from i4cp | May 19, 2011, Issue 523

I think most of us can picture this classic - if comically outdated - scenario...

The year - 1978. The place - a crowded disco on a Saturday night. Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band's "A Fifth of Beethoven" is thumping, perspiring couples clad in their best polyester are crowding the dance floor doing the Hustle and the mirror ball is slowly turning overhead.

The scene is perfect for a single guy...let's call him Rick... to pick up a "chick." Rick spots a particularly "foxy" one sitting at the bar so he decides to make his move. He adjusts the collar on his pale blue leisure suit, smoothes his feathered haircut, and takes the stool next to her.

Then he delivers his no-fail line...

"Hey Baby, what's your sign?"

The "foxy chick"...let's call her Denise...tosses her Farah Fawcett hairdo, peers coyly over the umbrella in her Fuzzy Navel and purrs, "I'm an Aquarius."

"Right on!" Rick thinks to himself, "a water sign."

He turns to Denise and smiles. "That's really groovy, baby. I'm a Pisces. You wanna boogie?"

The scene fades as they take to the dance floor. Let's just say that Rick and Denise keep on truckin'.

Examining the scene from today's perspective, the obvious issue - beyond their poor fashion sense - is whether either Rick or Denise actually learned anything substantive about the other in that brief exchange. On the other hand, I'm sure that more relationships than many of us would like to admit were launched in the seventies based solely on the knowledge of our date's astrological sign.

However, believe it or not, the i4cp research team has discovered that corporate America isn't entirely immune from using similar surface generalizations to choose, assess and develop their C-Suite successors.

While the participants in this recent (unpublished) study identified a long list of tools that they use for assessing high potential senior executives for development purposes, i4cp has discovered that there are two that stand out as the methods organizations use most often - 1) 360-degree reviews and 2) the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (or MBTI). While the fact that these methods led the pack is probably no surprise, what is striking is that high-performing organizations use these methods very differently from their low-performing counterparts.

Overall, just under 40% of all companies participating in the study use some form of 360-degree feedback to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their future top executives. The MBTI is used by approximately 23% of all companies. No other methods were being used by more than 20% of companies that participated in the study.

However, interesting differences began to emerge when the research team examined the methods of high-performing organizations and compared them to low-performing organizations. Fifty percent of high performers used some form of 360-degree feedback, compared to just over 28% of low performers. Additionally, 17% of high-performing companies supplemented their 360-degree feedback process with the MBTI; the percentage of low-performing companies using the MBTI was just under 20%.

At this point, there were no major surprises. One easy explanation for the fact that high-performing companies use 360-degree assessments more frequently is that 360's are labor intensive and often require expertise for synthesizing and delivering the results and, as a result, may simply be too costly for low-performing companies to afford.

Digging deeper, however, the i4cp researchers also asked whether organizations used multiple methods in their assessment process. Among global companies, nearly 79% of high-performing companies used multiple assessment methods, demonstrating that they likely use 360-degree feedback in tandem with other methods - like the MBTI - in the assessment of their C-suite successors. However, among low-performing global companies, only 38% reported using multiple methods. This means that more than half of low-performing global companies use either 360-degree feedback or the MBTI, but not both.

It's important to understand how MBTI assessments work. Users are asked to answer a series of questions that focus on four personality dimensions, resulting in the identification of the user's profile, or type. These types are represented using letters that identify the polar positions of these four dimensions. These four-letter labels are commonplace among just about anyone who has spent much time in management anytime in the past decade. In fact, many people use these profile codes to refer to themselves or others to explain nearly any behavior. Comments such as "I'm sorry for getting my report to you late. I'm such an INFP" or "He drives me so crazy! He's so ISTJ!" have become nearly cliché.

Ultimately, the MBTI has sixteen profile types. That's it. Sixteen types to explain the personalities of every person on the planet.

To be clear, the MBTI is very helpful when it is used in combination with other forms of assessment and feedback. But when used only by itself, critics reasonably assert that the MBTI is over-simplified and often misused.

But that's exactly what the i4cp researchers have found that low-performing companies are doing. They are somewhat equally likely to use MBTI or 360-degree feedback (again, 20% versus 28%, respectively) but are twice as likely as high-performing companies to use only one of them.

I'm sure Rick and Denise had a "far out" time at the disco, where the consequences of connecting with each other based solely on something as shallow as a horoscope sign were relatively innocuous. But the stakes are much higher when it comes to succession planning. Do we really want to leave the future of the C-suite to a tool that can only tell us that the executive who is a potential successor to the CFO is nothing more than an ESTJ? Frankly, it sort of freaks me out.

John Gibbons is the Vice President and General Manager of Research and Development at i4cp. He has been a human resources practitioner, researcher and thought leader in human capital strategy for more than 20 years. His work has been featured in hundreds of publications and news outlets around the world including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, CEO Magazine, CNBC, CNN and National Public Radio (NPR).