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The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership-Powered Company
DIAMOND
RATING
RATING
Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, James Noel, Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 2000
Senteo’s Review 
In this book Ram Charan and his two co-authors provide a roadmap for those currently in leadership positions on how to successfully build a nurturing culture and environment allowing for employee development and learning between each leadership stage. The fundamental methodology outlined in this book is a roadmap based on six different leadership stages that each leader goes through on their way to the top. The book points out current leadership failures and the lack of corporate adaptation to the new world of the dot.com era (the book was published in 2000). It then goes on building a methodology for top management to follow and implement to begin developing leaders from within. The book’s main criticism of the way leadership growth was failing back then was that leaders who moved up through each leadership tier to the next didn’t have the appropriate tools, skills or mindset to take on that next stage in leadership. Essentially, leaders need to forget the value structure of their previous position, and, as they progress, learn to lead in their new positions from a holistic perspective.
This book is split into two sections. The first section, chapters 1-7 are dedicated to building out the methodology and describing in detail what each turn of the “pipeline” looks like during this path of leadership succession that occurs. The image above illustrates each “pipeline passage” turn from one leadership stage to the next. Each passage has a specific definition and outlines the skills, time applications and values that are required to make the passage successful. The second section, chapters 8-13, focuses on resolving pipeline problems, creating development plans and more effectively managing leadership performance as well as tools and techniques for coaching leaders, dealing with succession issues, and preventing leadership failures.
This book does a great job of being the “all-in-one” solution to the problem it addresses. It gives you the fundamental definitions and explanations of each leadership position, then the tools to implement the methodology and finally the instruments to keep everything running smoothly. It’s well written with digestible leader relatable examples. Furthermore, while this book is fairly dated, the shortfalls that were hitting companies 20 years ago with leadership acquisition and development are just as valid today on an even greater scale.
Off the bat, be prepared for a slog. This book is content rich and provides useful examples to help you understand the methodology. If you’re in a position with the power to enact these types of structural changes (i.e. a CEO) then you may already know most of this from intuition and experience. Since this book is so focused on building this pipeline for developing leaders from within, it missed a valuable opportunity to directly target rising leaders to help them develop. While an intelligent leader with career growth opportunities is probably smart enough to extrapolate the information they need, it is not presented in a particularly neat package.
Together, these authors have more first-hand experience in leadership development and succession planning than you’re likely to find anywhere else. And here, they show companies how to create a pipeline of talent that will continuously fill their leadership needs-needs they may not even yet realize. The Leadership Pipeline delivers a proven framework for priming future leaders by planning for their development, coaching them, and measuring the results of those efforts. Moreover, the book presents a combination leadership-development/succession-planning program that ensures a steady line-up of leaders for every critical position within the company. It’s an approach that bolsters the retention of intellectual capital as it eliminates the need to go outside for expensive “stars,” who will probably jump ship before they reach their full potential anyway.
This book is targeted and most useful for executive level leaders looking to restructure their in-house leadership development programs. While it is focused on those readers, this book could also prove useful for anyone looking to climb the corporate leadership ladder.abover
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