Any CEO would agree that having a strong core of seasoned executives running the C-suite is critical. Yet many organizations haven’t developed beyond the hunch phase in terms of knowing how strong their top leaders really are. At Cisco, we designed an in-depth executive assessment to help us profile each of our topmost leaders: strengths, development needs, aspirations, strategic capabilities, blind spots, operational capabilities, how they develop their teams, how they fare in big-stage versus one-on-one communications, and so on.

The assessment is organized in two parts. First is a quantitative evaluation created by Spencer Stuart that measures a leader’s business and functional competencies against industry peers; second is a qualitative part that evaluates leadership ability based on a multitude of in-depth interviews with the leader’s peers, supervisors, and direct reports done by our internal executive talent team. The result blends qualitative research and benchmarked data on other C-suite executives to give us a solid indication of an individual’s potential and development needs.

Conducted about every 18 months, assessment scores deliver candid insight into each individual’s leadership style and reveal what working conditions allow them to thrive or struggle. The process is transparent and yields what some at Cisco call “brutally honest” feedback. Yet, executive leaders at Cisco — from the CEO on down — tend to value the 360-degree feedback they receive, in part because we’ve been engaging in this activity for a number of years and it’s part of the corporate culture. What’s more, it helps inform how the top leadership team should evolve, what we need to do to support each individual, and the role they might play in the future of the organization.

Some of this seems fairly intuitive, but there are a number of other things we’ve learned from this process that have broader implications for why organizations should routinely assess and analyze the strength of their top team:

It uncovers vulnerabilities as well as blind spots. Creating a reliable picture of our leaders’ strengths provides commensurate insight into the opposite — where we are most vulnerable. If assessments tell us, for instance, that Cisco executives are roundly failing to connect with direct reports, then we would suspect that we have a broader engagement problem to contend with.

In addition, we consider the strength of our executive team from a portfolio perspective. If the assessments indicate that we’re light on specific business capabilities — either technical or strategic — then we’ll know which gaps we need to bridge through development, acquisition, or external hires. For example, if the executive portfolio is made up mostly of strategic thinkers with no operational capability, then the organization might suffer on the strategy execution side.

The assessments also commonly uncover blind spots that at times take individual leaders by surprise. In one such instance, an officer received across-the-board accolades from his global staff — they considered him to be a “stellar leader” and a “role model.” And yet his peers reported that he was distant and defensive, and that he “didn’t partner on key business decisions.” The feedback was instantly eye-opening for the executive. To his credit, he addressed the criticism openly and directly with his colleagues and worked to adjust his style, repair relationships, and start to establish the trust of his peers.

It accelerates executive readiness. In a company as large and diverse as Cisco, there are numerous opportunities to test and develop one’s leadership capabilities. The assessments offer a baseline indicator of how individuals need to improve and what they hope to achieve. If an assessment identifies a leader’s need to advance her skills around conflict resolution or negotiation, we can pinpoint projects and team assignments that provide the challenge in spades. We can also deliver greater exposure to strategic roles and/or global assignments.

For example, a very talented executive’s 360 indicated that she was underutilized as a leader. As a result, we shifted her into a larger role with higher visibility and gave her board exposure. Each successive assignment after that helped us learn how she would respond to new challenges and gave her more experience and confidence.

It measures how we work in teams. Cisco consists of numerous project teams across the company. Although hierarchy is important, the nature of our business requires that we work collaboratively. Decisions need to be made quickly and efficiently, and leaders from one product area need to effectively interact with those from others. Our leadership assessments are designed to evaluate each leaders’ ability to manage teams. They deliver feedback from team members and help us continue to cultivate a culture of accountability and collaboration.

It creates a smooth path for succession. Our executive assessments played a leading part in our recent CEO succession process, as John Chambers became Executive Chairman and Chuck Robbins was appointed as CEO. In fact, as one of the inputs we used to identify the top internal candidates, the assessments were particularly useful to the board and CEO search committee. As succession planning progressed, we rotated candidates through assignments, continued to give them bigger jobs, and created development plans. Once we were sure which executives belonged in the CEO pipeline, we provided them with specific coaching, gave them roles with increased scope and accountability, delivered exposure to external investors, and provided speaking opportunities that put them out on the world stage.

Overall, it was a smooth and largely disruption-free succession, in large part because we knew the specific strengths of each top executive. But the opportunity goes beyond CEO changes. For almost a decade, we have led robust succession planning processes for all of our critical top roles, which has helped us through numerous seamless successions. Using assessments and other tools to identify who is ready to lead — even before specific successions move to the forefront — helps insure a robust leadership pipeline and makes succession easier when the time comes to act.

It gives the board greater confidence. Even beyond succession planning, Cisco’s board members are interested in learning the strengths and development needs of our top talent. Although it is not customary to report up the chain of command on this type of process, doing so keeps Cisco’s board informed and gives them greater confidence in the quality of our leaders.

Is there a downside to knowing the strength of your top leadership team? Well, not all executives make it through the process unscathed. It can be grueling when development areas are put under the spotlight. In addition, when a C-suite executive is ready for something bigger and better, he sees it right there on the page. As seamless as successions have been at Cisco, when more than one individual is clearly CEO-ready, you have to anticipate that they will be running an organization at some point — whether it’s your own or another.