Leadership Pipe

The Leadership Pipeline

How to Build the Leadership Powered Company

Ram Charan, Steve Drodder, Jim L. Noel

Chapter 1: Six Leadership Passages

An Overview

The six turns in the pipeline that we'll discuss here are major events in the life of a

leader. They represent significant passages that can't be mastered in a day or by taking a

course. Our goal here is to help you become familiar with the skills, time applications,

and work values demanded by each passage, as well as this particular leadership gestalt.

Once you grasp what these passages entail and the challenges involved in making each

leadership transition, you'll be in a better position to use this information to unclog your

organization's leadership pipeline and facilitate your own growth as a leader. Going

through these passages helps leaders build emotional strength as they take on tasks of

increasing complexity and scope. The following six chapters will provide you with ideas

and tools to achieve full performance at all leadership levels in your organization.

As you read about each passage, you'll naturally apply it to your own organization and

may question how we've defined and divided each turn in the pipeline. The odds are that

you'll immediately think of at least one (and probably more) leadership transitions that

apply to your own company that we have not addressed in the Leadership Pipeline

model. While there certainly are other transitions, they are too small or incomplete to

qualify as a major passage. For instance, many global companies have business general

managers at the country level and regional executives with responsibility for several

countries. These regional executives report to a person with a title such as global

consumer products head. Although this global consumer products head manages group

managers (the regional executives in this case), she isn't an enterprise manager because

she reports to a CEO or president and has little accountability for corporate...