High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders [Hardcover]

Morgan W. McCall Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1998

How do you develop the people who will one day lead your company? "High Flyers" challenges conventional wisdom about how to groom executives for the top positions in the firm by presenting a strategic framework for identifying and developing future executives that senior managers can use to identify and develop future executives. McCall demonstrates that the best executives aren't necessarily managers who possess a previously identified, generic list of traits or who have risen to the top through survival of the fittest. Rather, the real leaders of the future are those who have the ability to learn from their experiences and remain open to continuous learning. If these people get the right experiences on the job, they will have the ultimate opportunity to learn new executive skills. Full of vivid real-life examples, "High Flyers" is for everyone in the organization who has responsibility for developing people - as well as for aspiring managers who want to learn what it takes to become truly effective leaders. For companies, "High Flyers" demonstrates the power of executive development as a competitive advantage and the way to ensure the best leadership for the future.

Editorial Reviews

Review

You've got to love a business book that quotes John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, and Warren Bennis to illustrate the same point. --Journal of Business Strategy -- Journal of Business Strategy

From the Back Cover

High Flyers is a brilliant contribution to the study of leadership effectiveness. --Douglas A. Ready, President, International Consortium for Executive Development Research

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 254 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press; 1 edition (January 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875843360
• ISBN-13: 978-0875843360
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #384,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More about executives than leaders..., January 18, 2002

By 

Stephen Armstrong (Hadley, Ma USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders (Hardcover)

The author is a professor of management at USC, so his perspectives on leadership are limited to those qualities found in executives and in very large businesses that support the training of executives. The most helpful aspect of his book is that McCall urges large companies to develop systematic training for executive leaders, rather than leaving younger executives in a sink-or-swim situation. He also has a bias against ruthless, cut-throat competition and male testosterone-driven demonstrations of power and wealth that executives can get drawn into or promote.
Nevertheless, the book is limited: it says very little about leadership as a quality found in other people, other settings; implies that leadership is a unique quality of exceptional people that can be taught to those up-and-coming risers primarily; and supporting data is quite limited. He stumbles when he talks about leadership per se by using an example of a child violin prodigy, as if this child-becoming-virtuoso should be our model of leadership development.
It also is overwritten, the way stuff from Harvard Business School Press is overwritten: breathless, breathtaking, fawning over winners, etc.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A strong argument overstretched., October 21, 1999

By 

Jonathan Lehrich - See all my reviews

This review is from: High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders (Hardcover)

Many celebrated leaders were high flyers. So was Icarus.

If experience teaches us anything, it's that we learn most effectively from experience. Such is the conclusion of Morgan McCall, whose years of work with leaders and organizations are encapsulated most recently in High Flyers. In McCall's view, leaders achieve success (and therefore promotion) because they have profited by experience, or at least proved themselves equipped to meet the challenges thrown at them. The emphasis here is on experience, not talent: although ability clearly plays a part in the ascent of the high flyer, it's the capacity and even eagerness to learn that distinguishes the eagle from the penguin.

Unfortunately, the shift from star-rise to nose-dive can strike even the highest flyer, and often does. Using extensive research and restrained gusto, McCall recounts cautionary tales of top corporate leaders, seemingly destined for greatness, who alarmingly and disastrously derailed. Initially successful for their track record, brilliance, commitment, charm, and/or ambition, these leaders were all perceived as having the "right stuff". However, as their power and authority increased, so did the importance of what McCall calls "the darker side of strengths", until - all too suddenly - the strengths became weaknesses, the arrogance and blind spots grew, the luck ended, and the house of cards came crashing down.

So what is to be done? McCall makes a persuasive case that if experience is the best teacher, then experience can be planned developmentally. In Chapters 3 and 4, the strongest of the book, he offers a series of figures and descriptions that identify (a) what makes an experience powerful, (b) which experiences can be planned as developmental interventions, and (c) how organizations can link their strategic intent to leadership challenges, and the challenges in turn to specific experiences for executive development. Here again McCall focuses on assignments, such as leading a turnaround, participating on an expansion team, or working for an effective leader several layers up. Training receives short shrift, other than the occasional passing reference to formal programs as substitutes for experiences that are unavailable or nonexistent. For the most part, leaders are made - not born - because their "talent [is] honed by experience over a long period." Give them the experience, create a learning culture, and the talented leaders will rise.

Assuming that you have identified the talent, of course. It's on this point that McCall himself derails, or switches to a slower and less certain track. The author dislikes and distrusts competencies; indeed, in referring to HR's over-hasty attempts to identify leadership talent, he asserts that "thus was ushered in the age of competencies, leadership development programs, and belief in miracles." Yet although he's correct that "end-state" competencies too often verge on the inflexible and vague, McCall ignores the potential of future-focused competencies and level-specific behavioral definitions. Furthermore, having denigrated leadership competency models, McCall falls back on nebulous notions of assessment that stress learning over performance and development over immediate results. But by admitting that (a) these notions differ merely in the competencies' orientation, (b) competency models provide the most consistent assessment criteria, and (c) competency-based assessments provide a progress report for development, McCall by book's end has gradually abandoned his stance in favor of inconclusive recommendations.

Ultimately, High Flyers poses a strong argument for planned, experience-based executive development. Other recommendations remain less clear, in part because McCall's "Prescriptive Matrix" appears in the last ten pages of the main text without room for full elucidation. One could wish that McCall had targeted his audience more precisely; for the relatively knowledgeable HR/OD professional, much of the second half of the book will tease rather than satisfy. But read High Flyers nonetheless, and use it to reexamine and reinvigorate the developmental path of your organization's leadership talent. Even better, give a copy to the reluctant senior executive who thinks leadership development is a waste of time. The research and business case will help you alarm, and even inspire.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A MODEL FOR DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF LEADERS, June 29, 2000

By 

Ingmar M. Wienen - See all my reviews

This review is from: High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders (Hardcover)

MCCALL INTRODUCES A MODEL FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF LEADERS, SUGGESTING THAT PEOPLE WHO ARE ABLE TO LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE WILL LEARN THE NECESSARY LEADERSHIP SKILLS, IF THEY ARE EXPOSED TO THE RIGHT KIND OF EXPERIENCES, AND IF THEY RECEIVE THE RIGHT KIND OF SUPPORT IN THEIR LEARNING EFFORTS. HE POINTS OUT, THAT IT HAS TO BE THE BUSINESS STRATEGY AS DEFINED BY THE TOP-MANAGEMENT THAT DETERMINES WHICH LEADERSHIP SKILLS ARE REQUIRED FOR THE FUTURE OF THE ORGANISATION, AND WHICH KIND OF EXPERIENCE WILL BE KEY FOR THE INTENDED PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT (188).

McCall starts by discussing the nature of leadership skills: are they a set of skills, that one either does have or not, or can they be learned? Based on his previous research he holds, that executive leaders are more made than born. Therefore he asserts that leadership potential can not be identified by looking for a profile of "competencies", but by looking for the ability to acquire the skills that will be needed in the future. Only this approach will insure leadership capability in a world of rapid change (4/5). McCall goes on by contrasting a "selection perspective" and a "developmental perspective". If leadership requirements are seen as a finite set of positive attributes, or "competencies", a leader either has them or not. Experience will be a test to verify whether one has them or not. On the other hand, if leadership requirements are seen as something that can come in multiple possibilities, a leader might obtain them, but also loose them, over time. Experience will be a source of the required attributes.

To build the case for a developmental perspective, McCall analyses "derailment" cases, were things went wrong. Using the example of the president of Kellogg Co., Horst Schroeder, he names five factors of initial success, which are common to people who failed at a later stage of their career: track record, brilliance, commitment, charm and ambition (29). When looking at the causes for the turn from success to failure, he lists four elements: 1) strengths can become a weakness, 2) blind spots or weaknesses that did not matter initially, later do matter, 3) success can lead to arrogance and 4) bad luck. (36).

McCall then sets out to define what would be the "right kind of experience". He outlines sixteen developmental experiences, coming in four groups: 1) assignments, 2) other people, 3) hardships and 4) other events (68). McCall emphasises, that there is no such thing as a generic development path, however, meaning that many different experiences can be useful. Development, therefore, is about a rational use of experience (81).

McCall holds that executive development should be determined by business strategy: the business strategy has to suggest which experiences are the most important for development (108). He points out that there are already processes at work, that have to be identified first. He than uses a case study (99) to describe the path from strategic intend to executive development: strategy, e.g. "sustained growth", was translated into leadership challenges, e.g. "dealing with increased complexity effectively". These leadership challenges were subsequently translated to possible developmental experiences, e.g. "lead an expansion that requires adding something new or different".

As McCall believes that leadership talent should not be identified by using a list of end-state attributes, but by looking for the ability to learn what needs to be learned from experiences, he introduces a growth model for talent (130). First, talented people will have to pay the "price of admission" for getting the organisational attention and investment. This involves being committed to making a difference, seeing things from new angles and having the courage to taking risks. Then, talented people will take advantage of the opportunities generated by the visibility. The next difference that characterise talented people is that they increase the learning opportunity. Finally, they take learning to heart, and change as a result of the experience.

Because of the central role of "the right kind of experience" in the development of the next generation of leaders, the mechanism to move people from one assignment to another is McCall's next focus. Succession planning can be more productive from a developmental perspective, if replacement candidates for key assignments are not identified on the basis of their current readiness for the job, but on the basis of how much they could learn from it. He predicts, that decision makers would only dare to do so, if they are not only held accountable for short-term results, but also for development of talent to meet future strategic needs (149). In organisations, were no formal system for movement exists, tactics for development could include making deals with other managers, influencing individual executives and counselling talented people to play a more active role in their own development (153). Yet another approach would be reengineering or corporate restructuring, presenting opportunity to redesign jobs without necessarily reassigning people (157). In conclusion, McCall underlines that people learn most by doing things they have never done before.

McCall defines three catalysts as the right kind of assistance for the learning efforts of leadership talent: 1) improvement of feedback, 2) provision of incentives and resources, 3) support of the change effort (181).

In his final chapter, McCall summarises the case for strategic executive development: 1) leadership makes a difference for the successful change of organisations, 2) leadership can not always be found or bought outside, 3) derailments are expensive and therefore should be avoided, 4) "survival of the fittest" is not the same as "survival of the best", meaning that leaving leadership development up to chance is foolish, 5) development cost are already sunk for the larger part, so at least the return on the investment should be sought for, 6) creating a learning environment is consistent with employee empowerment, 7) it is good business practice and good for stakeholder relations.

The book is certainly worth reading.