The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company (Hardcover)

by Ram Charan (Author), Stephen Drotter (Author), James Noel (Author) "This is an era in which the demand for leadership greatly exceeds the supply..." (more)
Key Phrases: enterprise functional managers, group functional manager, next leadership level, Drotter Human Resources, Wall Street, Performance Improvement (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
For every organization that's ever reached beyond its own borders for top leadership only to have those high-profile, high-salary top leaders bungle and exit as abruptly as they appeared, this smart, substantive, and clear-eyed book is a godsend.

Written by three genuine experts in management development (one of them helped design GE's deservedly famous succession-development process), The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company finally shows organizations how to undo the knots and clogs in their in-house "leadership pipeline" so they can constantly groom the best people at every level to move up to the next rung of leadership. Not only do the authors identify the six transition phases, or "turns," of the pipeline--from self-manager (individual worker), first-line manager, and managers' manager to function manager, business manager, group manager and enterprise manager (the last essentially being a CEO)--they describe each with remarkable insight; these six levels of leadership growth, for example, exist at the base of every midsize or large organization regardless of how each structures its individual hierarchy. With each, they take care to point out both the new skills and values (there is a difference) one must acquire before making a turn, as well as how to measure whether someone has them before moving them along. They also show how to determine whether candidates are embodying those skills and values once they've made the transition, and how to groom them for the next level right from day one.

The result? Not just one potentially qualified in-house candidate for a top leadership position (the kind of dearth that forces companies to look outward for expensive and often short-lived leadership "stars"), but a whole generation of them, not to mention younger generations to succeed them.

The book includes sample scenarios (from both fictional and real-life organizations), definitions, checklists and charts that break down and illustrate its main points in every chapter. Though shrewd and straightforward on every page, The Leadership Pipeline isn't for anyone looking an easy, step-by-step, worksheet-guided quick fix to management development and succession planning. The authors stress that it takes some hard thinking for companies to determine what they really need from leaders at each level (and to figure out which individuals have the potential and desire to scale those levels). It requires serious homework to translate this book's excellent guidance into a plan for your own organization's pipeline.

That's a small price to pay, however, for a book with such uncommonly clear insight into what it takes to nurture and navigate the best leadership from right inside your own house. --Timothy Murphy

From Booklist
One of management's biggest challenges is finding new leaders, and one of the questions that arises in this quest is whether to bring in "new blood" and fresh ideas or take advantage of "home-grown" experts already acclimated to an organization's corporate culture. The current labor shortage and a greater willingness by younger workers to change jobs have only added to this challenge. Recent books such as High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders (1998) and Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People [BKL Ag 00] have weighed in on the side of "growing your own," and now Charan and his coauthors add their support. Charan is a "leadership coach" and has written extensively for academic and popular business journals. He and two fellow consultants describe the natural hierarchy of work that exists in most organizations, which takes the form of six career passages that the authors call the "leadership pipeline." For leaders to progress, they must be working within each passage at a level appropriate to their skills, values, and use of time. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787951722
• ISBN-13: 978-0787951726
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,627 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Management Process for Overcoming the Peter Principle, December 24, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

What do General Electric, Citigroup, and Marriott International have in common? They have built on the original conceptual work by Walt Mahler at General Electric to establish sustainable methods to developing management breadth and depth. This valuable book outlines the key principles of that current best practice.

At a time when more and more companies are relying on headhunters to bring in leaders and management turnover is soaring among young talent, "growing your own" leaders is about to become a necessary core competence for the future. While almost everyone who is interested in the subject has read glossy articles about what General Electric does at its Crotonville facility, this book provides the core of the broader management process behind those articles.

The first part of the book focuses on six key transitions that help a leader develop. The second part shows you how to diagnose how individual leaders are doing, and how to help them make better progress.

The six transitions are:

from managing yourself to managing others

from managing others to managing managers

from managing managers to functional managing

from functional managing to business managing

from business managing to group managing

from group managing to enterprise managing.

At each transition, what the individual values and focuses on has to change dramatically. In organizations where this transition is not made explicit, you get almost all of the managers in the organization "stuck" doing things the wrong way, still looking from the perspective of their last job. That's the stuff that Dilbert and the Peter Principle are made of.

Although the book takes a large organization's point of view, in various places the points are translated into a small organizational context.

Based on my experience with leaders at all these levels, I certainly agree with the authors' points about the key challenges involved. I also think that their diagnostic methods are good. In most cases, the root cause for the problem lies further up in the organization with someone who is not focusing or working on helping managers develop.

The key weakness of the book is that in some elements the reader with limited business experience will still not be sure what to do. For example, the step from a functional manager to a business manager requires integrating all of the functions and perspectives in order to be successful. That is an enormous leap in knowledge, expertise, and experience. Although business school cases will help those with that experience, most managers will find it impossible to make the transition unless the business is very undemanding -- something that seldom happens any more.

My own experience suggests that basic learning has to be pursued throughout the organization that emphasizes skills like problem solving, locating and implementing the next generation of best practices, and developing a deep understanding of how to create superior business processes as the foundation for this kind of leadership development program. In advanced companies, you can add the concept of having people develop skills for innovating new business models. Then, this leadership development process can become truly powerful.

However you decide to go about it, the examples of setbacks and progress outlined in this excellent book will improve your ability to think about improving leadership in your organization. I urge you to read, consider, and apply what you learn.

After you have finished thinking about and using the book, I suggest that you also think about where else in your company you do not have a management process to do something important. For example, do you have a management process to keep you aligned with powerful trends beyond your control? Do you have a management process to create superior business models?

Be all the leader you can be!

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A "clone" book of ideas and no reference to others, August 26, 2005

By	M. Bruno "marcos bruno" (São Paulo, Brazil) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Reading this 'leadership pipeline' I became really astonished of seeing here all the ideas of Elliott Jaques and Gillian Stamp (Bioss International) just copied with no reference to them. I keep wondering how can that be done. Jaques and Gillian Stamp has written for so many years about human capability and seven levels of work complexity that are clearly repeated in this book withouth no comment to them. Even the general themes are there, for example managing other, leader of leader, managing a business unit, managing a group of business unit. If you don't beleive me, just read Requisite Organization (Jaques) and previous ones, for example, and you will learn that Jaques' ideas are being developed for more than 30 years. So, better learn with the real creative people that has really done researches around the theme.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars an undergraduate perspective, April 24, 2006

By	akp5 (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

In my reading of the "Leadership Pipeline," I found it to be a fascinating look at all levels of management, albeit a somewhat unconfirmable one. The purpose of the book seems to be to outline, then advocate what it calls "The Leadership Pipeline." Think of it like a long drainage pipe system, with six intersections symbolizing six transitions in management (each of which can run smoothly or become clogged based on managers values and behavioral traits), all the way from entry level employee to CEO. The book takes the approach that every entry level employee, if they possessed the drive and willingness to change can become the CEO of any company they choose. In fact, the book so strongly advocates this position that it maintains that this is the best way to create the ultimate CEO from the very first pages.

It is this belief that I found to be somewhat irritating as I read through the book. The notion that an entry level worker based in sales with no degree could become a more qualified CEO than their more educated counterparts was a little hard for me to swallow. The Leadership Pipeline does not actually advocate replacing more educated workers with less educated ones, but it does continuously profess that the best way to groom a leader at any leadership level is to ensure that they have gained the experience necessary by following all of the steps of the leadership pipeline model which have come before it, and all of those steps should be taken within the same company. It seems almost as concerned with advocating the implementation of its own design as it does offering constructive criticism to better the current system of business management. The book also fails to take into account what happens to the worker who gets laid off due to corporate takeovers, mergers, etc.

That said, it does offer a number of good points on how to become a more effective leader. The most important of which is how it dispels the notion that one can cling to the elements of their job which made them successful at previous management levels. At each level of management (the book professes) a worker must take a step back and re-evaluate what exactly their job at that level becomes. It offers means by which one can generate positive communication and feedback so that the manager can truly become an effective leader. The way it goes on to illustrate the key traits of successful managers at each "intersection" by way of useful real life examples and anecdotes was one of the books major strengths and helped the flow tremendously. The language in which the book is written is geared to any audience, and in light of the admittedly dry material, it made it run more smoothly.

One of the biggest problems I had with the book was it seems to have been written for an incredibly limited audience. The advice it gives on how to eliminate management problems at most of the "intersections" could only really be applied by extremely high levels of management which few actually achieve. I must admit I am still an undergraduate college student so my perspective is limited, but I cannot imagine how a great number of the concepts in this book would be useful to anyone other than those in the realm of vice president or CEO, and even if the principals were appropriate to that audience, they would have to be a member of a global multi billion dollar corporation with similar levels of management and positions discussed in the book.

In the end I give it a 3 out of 5.