Cambridge Business Association
The Leadership Pipeline
Book

The Leadership Pipeline

How to Build the Leadership-Powered Company

Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel
Jossey-Bass, 2000
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Well Structured
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Organizations need leaders, but natural leaders are at least as rare as natural athletes. And, even natural athletes need careful training and development – given that almost everyone is capable of developing some degree of athletic potential. Similarly, the right training and development program can help almost anyone build leadership potential. In fact, it can help a few people develop extraordinary leadership abilities. Yet, at many companies, short-term priorities eclipse the long-term thinking needed to develop a good leadership pipeline. Author Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel take a plain, sensible approach. If you are a leader or need to develop leaders for large corporations, this is a very useful volume.

Summary

Executives typically pass through six stages of career growth.

Often companies lack enough leaders to meet the demand for leadership, but they can develop future leaders with careful planning and execution. Leadership requires developing new skills and a new attitude about what matters at work and how to manage time and resources.

Executives typically pass through six stages of career growth; each stage can help them develop leadership talents. The stages begin with managing other workers and proceed to managing other managers, running functions, heading a business, steering a group of businesses and, finally, leading an entire enterprise.

The hardest transition is from self-management to managing other workers.

In some ways, learning to manage your fellow workers is the most demanding passage. People who are doing a difficult job well usually don’t want to change, even if the change is a promotion to being a manager. They’re often uneasy about putting their work in other people’s hands in order to turn around and manage those same people.  Therefore, new managers may have the title of manager without exemplifying...

About the Authors

Ram Charan is an independent consultant, leadership coach and the author or co-author of numerous business books, including Boards at Work, Boards that Lead, What the CEO Wants You to Know and Every Business is a Growth Business. Stephen Drotter, author of The Succession Planning Handbook for the CEO and The Performance Pipeline, helped design General Electric’s succession planning process. James Noel is an executive coach and co-author of Action Learning.

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    c. f. 7 years ago
    Good functional summary. I listened to the entire book on audible. I needed to have a reference document to start applying to my own career. This is super helpful in this context.