Filling the Leadership Pipeline, CCL Press, 2005

There is an easy case to make for the imperative of investing in tomorrow's leaders today. It is the law of supply and demand: more organizations in greater competition under increased pressure to perform put a premium on scarce talent. The labor economy has become a seller's market, and poaching or luring talent away from other organizations is a losing proposition. The alternative is to become good at developing your talented managers into great leaders and aggressively seeking out potential and developing it anywhere and everywhere you can find it across the organization. The purpose of this volume is to share what has been learned in the last few years of increased attention to the systematic and strategic cultivation of leadership talent. The time is ripe for leading practitioners to share key lessons about building and filling a leadership pipeline. Following an introduction by Robert B. Kaiser, this book is divided into three parts and five chapters. The first part, Business Environment, presents the first chapter of the book: (1) Building the Executive Ranks: Current Practices in Developing Future Business Leaders (Patricia M. Weik). The second part, Considerations about Individual Managers, presents chapters: (2) Swimming Upstream: The Challenge of Managerial Promotions (Arthur M. Freedman); and (3) The Challenges of General Manager Transitions (Amy Kates and Diane Downey). Finally, the third section, Considerations about Development Systems, concludes the book with chapters: (4) When Leadership Development Fails Managers: Addressing the Right Gaps When Developing Leadership (H. Skipton Leonard); and (5) Creating Synergy and Difference in Development: One Organization's Competencies for Three Organizational Levels (Jennifer Martineau, Greg Laskow, Lisa Moye, and Dick Phillips).