Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis - Hardcover

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.

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