Product Description

Learn how top companies solve the problem of leadership succession from corporate America's leading consultant.

A serious crisis looms in American management today. More and more CEOs are failing; there remains an acute shortage of capable replacements. The true dilemma in leadership is the stagnant state of corporate leadership development. Because companies fail to hone their unit managers' leadership abilities, they are never able to fill their succession pipelines. With unit managers stagnating, companies have difficulty executing at every level, compounding the crisis. In I>Leaders at All Levels, bestselling author Ram Charan shows how top companies approach leadership development as a core competency, recognizing that an adaptable leadership pool is a competitive advantage, and focusing their attention on bringing out the best in the leaders they have.

Charan reveals exactly what's wrong with corporate leadership development and tells how to make it right. He explains the concept of a leadership "gene pool" and shows how companies can discover just what "DNA" they need to succeed. He also details how to uncover the hidden leaders in a company, when and where to bring in fresh talent, how to coach, measure, and reward leadership, and much more. For CEOs, directors, and anyone involved in leadership development, Leaders at All Levels is an eye-opening guide on how to get succession right.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #118565 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Review
"…cool-headed guide on how to identify and retain leaders and to get succession right". (Securities & Investment Review, April 2008)

From the Inside Flap

Leaders at All Levels

"Crisis may be an overused word, but it's a fair description of the state of leadership in today's corporations. CEOs are failing sooner, and falling harder, leaving companies in turmoil. At all levels, companies are short on the quantity and quality of leaders they need."—From the Introduction

In Leaders at All Levels, Ram Charan addresses a pressing problem—a shortfall of leaders prepared to face today's complex business challenges. When so many companies struggle to find successors for their top jobs, and when so many leaders rise to the top only to fail shortly after getting there, you know there's something wrong with our leadership development practices.

In this book, Ram Charan presents a radical and controversial remedy for the crisis in leadership: the Apprenticeship Model. This new approach to succession and to leadership development makes it a hands-on activity for leaders and their bosses. People with the talent for leadership get stiff challenges hand-picked for them. Their bosses play a crucial role in accelerating their development. HR gets a new job, as trustee of the Apprenticeship system. Leaders at all levels develop faster and better, and boards have better choices when it comes time to choose the next CEO.

New but not untested, this approach works because it is based on Charan's keen insights into how great business leaders actually develop. Having worked closely with many successful leaders over several decades, Charan concluded that:

• Leaders are different from other people

• Leaders develop their talent through practice and self-correction

Filled with down-to-earth advice and real-world examples, Leaders at All Levels gives you the tools you need to create an enduring legacy of leadership excellence. It also gives individual leaders a road map for taking charge of their own growth.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Leaders at All Levels

"Ram Charan's wisdom and experience come through in the profound insights that underlie this simple approach to building a better leadership pool. Any company concerned about its bench strength should follow this original and practical approach to developing leaders."
—Chad Holliday, chairman and CEO, DuPont

"Trusted by the cream of corporate leadership worldwide, Ram Charan uniquely blends the human reality of ultimately having to choose less-than-perfect leaders (a challenge all boards face) with a practical approach, for identifying and nurturing exceptional leaders."—Bob Lane, chairman and CEO, Deere & Company

"Leaders at All Levels is a practical and no-nonsense approach to building the talent pool which will differentiate your organization, now and in the future. Ram has distilled his decades of work with top CEOs and organizations, so the reader doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. It's all about the people."
—John Koster, M.D., president and CEO, Providence Health

"Ram Charan has mentored more leaders than anyone in the last two decades. Leaders at All Levels allows each of us to be his apprentice and to learn from him how to lead and to build leadership. The book is a marvelous mix of insight, experience, and wisdom. It will shape leadership succession for years to come." —Dave Ulrich, professor, University of Michigan Business School and coauthor of Why the Bottom Line ISN'T

"The one single thing that will make or break a company's growth and success today, tomorrow, and the day after that is the quality of leaders it can produce and keep. Ram Charan is without a doubt the go-to person on this subject. This is a must-read."—Bill Conaty, former senior vice president of human resources, General Electric

Customer Reviews

A pragmatic approach to leadership development throughout any enterprise

Now more than ever before, organizations need leadership at all levels and within all areas of their enterprise. The ?succession crisis? to which the subtitle of this book refers includes but is by no means limited to C-level executives. With all due respect to formal education and institutional training programs, on-the-job training is (by far) the best preparation for completing more demanding tasks, assuming increased responsibilities and duties, etc. Moreover, Ram Charan is absolutely correct when asserting that organizations ?are short on the quantity and quality of leaders they need?[We must] abandon our traditional leadership development practices. They?re not working. Tinkering and fine-tuning won?t solve the fundamental program. It?s time for a completely new approach to finding and developing the kinds of leaders businesses need? To fix the problem, you have to get to its root, which is the faulty conventional wisdom about what leadership is and how to improve it.?

Charan offers what he characterizes as a ?radically different approach,? one ?that is not for the fainthearted?: the Apprenticeship Model. (What it involves and how to implement it are best revealed within Charan?s narrative rather than discussed now, out of context.) Any model is based on certain assumptions and Charan?s is no exception. By now, he has concluded that not everyone can become a leader, that leadership ability is developed through practice and self-correction, and that the CEO job requires ?giant leaps in learning.? The Apprenticeship Model is based on these assumptions. As in all of his previous books, Charan is again a pragmatist when presenting his insights and recommendations in this book and thus almost wholly preoccupied with explaining what works, what doesn?t, and how to achieve the desired results. For example:

Chapter 1: How to measure the ?leadership talent deficit? in an organization and then fund efforts to reduce (if not eliminate) it

Note: This has serious implications for both hiring and subsequent training.

Chapter 2: How apprenticeship develops effective leaders

Chapter 3: How to recognize leadership potential

Note: My personal opinion is that the material in Chapter 3 should precede the material in Chapter 2.

Chapter 4: How to customize each leader?s growth path

Chapter 5: What the crucial role of ?bosses? is

Note: Personally, I dislike the term ?boss? but agree with Charan that one standard of measurement for a supervisor?s performance evaluation should be the extent to which that supervisor developed skills in those for whom she or his is directly responsible.

Chapter 6: How to manage apprenticeship initiatives and relationships systematically

Chapter 7: How to select the CEO candidate who is most likely to provide the leadership and produce the results that are needed

Chapter 8: How to institutionalize the Apprenticeship Model

Once again, I am in total agreement with Charan?s assertion that leadership must be development at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. The Apprenticeship Model is uniquely, indeed ideally suited to help achieve that objective because it is based on a sometimes misunderstood or neglected business reality: those who function as mentors (i.e. ?masters?) to their direct reports learn much of value while doing so; moreover, their direct reports, in turn, can and should serve as mentors to those for whom they are responsible. This interactive process is precisely what Thomas Davenport, Carla O?Dell, Peter Senge, and others mean when advocating a ?total learning organization.?

In the Epilogue, Charan observes that individual leaders can and should embrace the Apprenticeship Model even if their companies don?t and take ownership of their own development. Those who believe they have leadership potential that is undiscovered should take charge of their own learning and development. They should make their own luck.? Quite right.

Two final points. First, the model that Ram Charan recommends does not replace an organization?s formal training programs. On the contrary, both should be mutually supportive and carefully coordinated combinations of earning opportunities. Also, what Charan recommends can be implemented in any organization, whatever its size or nature may be.