Talent is an increasingly critical differentiator of corporate performance. The best companies realise that talent—more so than capital or technology—is a scarce resource at large companies today and poses one of the most significant barriers to growth. As companies increasingly rely on knowledge workers, the ability to source, develop, and retain talent becomes a critical differentiator.

We see clear evidence of this when we look at the quality of leadership benches across companies. CEB surveyed over 3,000 leaders on their perceptions of peer effectiveness at key leadership activities. This analysis found that organisations with the most effective leadership pipelines—one that have a strong supply of candidates and flexibility to meet changing needs of open roles—experience nearly double the rate of revenue and profit growth as competitors with weaker benches.

So here are the three critical talent conversations:

Conversation #1:  Expanding the perimeter of talent oversight: To ensure that the business has the right people available to fulfil future vacancies, boards need to expand the focus of talent monitoring. Most boards tend to focus disproportionately on talent issues related to executive leadership. In particular, the vast majority of board time spent on talent is dedicated to executive compensation, executive performance, and CEO succession. Increasingly, we find that the best boards look beyond these issues to understand how critical talent—individuals in roles just below the top layer—, not just leadership, impacts performance.

Conversation #2:  Increasing executive accountability for talent outcomes—Treat talent measurement like financial measurement: require robust analytics and clear links to business value. Instead of “ready-now” successors, ensure CEOs evaluate the leadership potential of individuals, benchmark with competitors, and differentiate leaders who are “developable” from those unlikely to change.

In addition to business performance, reward improvements to investments in engaging future talentInstead of tracking compliance violations, hold CEOs accountable for boosting integrity by building a strong culture.

Conversation #3:  Strengthening CEO succession planning strategies—Readiness is a red herring. Don’t try to predict the competencies a leader will need when succession is triggered or assume the competencies are the same as the ones your leaders have now. Increase the number of options by asking the CEO to broaden the experience of direct reports and rising leaders.

As talent becomes an increasingly important differentiator of corporate performance, the bar is rising both for management and boards to manage and monitor risks arising from talent. Boards at the best companies differentiate themselves from boards at competitor companies based on their depth of understanding of critical talent issues that impact strategy and performance.

For more information on this topic, please refer to Three Critical Talent Conversations for Boards of Directors at http://www.cebglobal.com/emea-hr.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited (EIU) or any other member of The Economist Group. The Economist Group (including the EIU) cannot accept any responsibility or liability for reliance by any person on this article or any of the information, opinions or conclusions set out in the article.