The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company [Hardcover]

Ram Charan (Author), Stephen Drotter (Author), James Noel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 2011

An updated and revised version of the bestselling The Leadership Pipeline – the critical resource for how companies can grow leaders from the inside. 

 In business, leadership at every level is a requisite for company survival. Yet the leadership pipeline –the internal strategy to grow leaders – in many companies is dry or nonexistent. Drawing on their experiences at many Fortune 500 companies, the authors show how organizations can develop leadership at every level by identifying future leaders, assessing their corporate confidence, planning their development, and measuring their results.

New to this edition is 65 pages of new material to update the model, share new stories and add new advice based on the ten more years of experience. The authors have also added a "Frequently Asked Questions" section to the end of each chapter.

Q&A with Co-Author Steve Drotter
What is the single thing that has changed the most in leadership since The Leadership Pipeline was first publish in 2000?
Since communication is such a central requirement for leaders, the changes in electronic communication have to be at the top of the list of impactful changes. Hand-held devices, social media and speed of access combine to bombard every employee--leader or individual contributors alike--with messaging. What is good about that is very good--instant availability of people and information. What is bad about that is very bad--everything is "urgent" and everyone is distracted. Leaders have lost control of the agenda in meetings, in offices and in peoples’ minds. A critical task for all leaders is to provide clarity of purpose and focus on the right outcomes. This has never been so important!

There are a lot of books on leadership, what sets The Leadership Pipeline apart?
The The Leadership Pipeline isn't theory. It is based on structured observation through over 1200 in depth executive assessments of very successful people--contenders for CEO, CFO, Group Executive and Business General Manager.

The Leadership Pipeline isn't about fads or the latest new thing. It based first on principles developed over 30 years.

The Leadership Pipeline isn't based on one industry or one culture. Work in 100 companies spread through 40 countries provided the base data.

It provides real differentiation between the layers of leadership so the company or business has a way to keep leaders from working on the wrong level and failing to produce all the required leadership results.

What is a common misconception about what a leader should or should not be working on?
There are two common misconceptions about what leaders should or shouldn't do. The first comes from the time horizon and the second comes from the uniqueness required of each layer.

The higher up a leadership position sits, the further out into the future the leader should focus. This time horizon difference starts very early in the leadership chain. An individual contributor should focus on the task at hand and its deadlines. Her boss, the first line manager, should focus on annual plans. Her boss, the manager of managers should focus on a two year time horizon. The time horizon extends for each layer above.

Each layer has a unique purpose that defines the contribution needed. Individual contributors deliver the product or service. Their boss, the first line manager, enables delivery by defining requirements, training, coaching, giving feedback, and rewarding. Their boss, the manager of managers, drives productivity by making sure the first line manager actually manages. The next layer up, function managers, deliver competitive advantage. The next layer, business managers, deliver short and long term profit.

Does this approach work for all companies, all sizes?
We have seen these concepts work with companies as small as 20 people and with global giants with several hundred thousand employees in 100 countries. The principles are exactly the same. Each layer has a unique purpose, each layer works in a different time horizon, and each layer must be differentiated from the layer below.

The leaders must provide clarity and focus no matter what the size of the company because the communication revolution affects and distracts everyone.

What are the central issues leaders must face in the next five to ten years?
The global financial crisis has resulted in pervasive uncertainty about markets, capital availability, solvency of customers and suppliers, investment strategies, etc. Competition will be fierce from developing countries. Leaders at every level will have to focus more sharply on performance than ever before. Waste, false steps, tolerance for mediocre performance or performers, bad investment decisions, out dated processes, lack of empowerment, and the like will lead more quickly to business failure. Leaders will have to provide real clarity of desired outcomes for every employee, differentiated by layer, and enable focus on obtaining those outcomes by everyone in order for their business to survive.

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 2 edition (January 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470894563
• ISBN-13: 978-0470894569
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #25 in Books > Business & Investing > Organizational Behavior > Organizational Learning

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 62 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Management Process for Overcoming the Peter Principle December 23, 2000

By Donald Mitchell HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

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!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful and helpful look at the upward transitions May 22, 2007

By Walter H. Bock VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This book gives you a thoughtful and reasoned look at the upward transitions process. It does an excellent job of outlining the needs and potential problems at each career stage. The advice is usable by three groups of potential readers.

You should buy this book if you are a senior manager, human resources executive, or board member in a company of any size who wants to understand the dynamics of leadership development/succession planning in a large company. The book outlines several transitions and the changes in skills and attitudes that are needed at each one, along with relevant pitfalls.

You should buy this book if you are a manager on an upward career trajectory and you want to learn what's ahead and what skills and attitudes you need to develop as well as what possible problems lie in wait. The chapter that describes your next transition will outline what you will have to do and what you will have to do better.

You should buy this book if you supervise other managers and you want some insight into analyzing performance issues and helping your people develop.

What are the negatives?

This book is written for people in big companies. With the exception of a couple of pages early in the book, managers in small to mid-sized businesses will need to figure out how this applies to them. This is not a big issue because of the range of material covered and the clarity of the presentation, but it still will be irritating to some readers.

The big company whose shadow falls across this book is General Electric. That's not a bad thing in itself. GE does a marvelous job of leadership development. What you have to watch for, though, are unstated assumptions that other companies have the same culture and values as GE, or even that values matter as much everywhere else.

For example, the authors state that "formal training for first line managers is fairly common." That's not true in the majority of US companies today.

The authors state that "managers who aren't cut out for this role should be put on an individual contributor track." But in many companies there is no individual contributor "track." Only managing others leads you to higher status and higher pay.

While there is a lot of good material handling the various transitions, you won't find much on deciding who should be promoted in the first place. But that's the only significant gap I see in this excellent book. Judging who to promote is a key decision and a key component of the success of the promotion.

The bottom line is that this is an excellent book, filled with material that can be used by people in many different situations.

33 of 44 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

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.