The Leadership Pipeline

The Leadership Pipeline – Ram Charan

Many companies struggle to develop enough capable leaders, and many people promoted into leadership roles fail because they continue to do the work that made them successful at the previous level. In The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership-Powered Company, Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel offer a framework for developing leaders throughout an organization.

Based on decades of experience working with large companies, the authors describe a series of critical passages that leaders must navigate as they move up the organization. These include moving from managing yourself to managing others, from managing others to managing managers, from managing managers to functional manager, from functional manager to business manager, from business manager to group manager, from group manager to enterprise manager.

At each passage, the authors explain, leaders must develop new skills, learn to allocate their time differently and, crucially, change their work values, letting go of activities that were important at the previous level. Many leadership problems arise when people fail to make these transitions and continue to operate at the wrong level.

The book shows how organizations can use the pipeline model to identify leadership potential, design development programs, assess performance, plan succession and diagnose leadership problems. Practical examples and tools help readers apply the framework.

Widely used by companies around the world, The Leadership Pipeline is a valuable resource for HR professionals, executives, managers and anyone responsible for developing leaders at every level of an organization.