Growing Your Company's Leaders: How Great Organizations Use Succession Management to Sustain Competitive Advantage

By making succession management a part of business strategy, companies will always be able to fill key leadership positions.

Within the next few years, "baby boomer" leaders and managers will be retiring in huge numbers. From the executive suite on down, the challenge to put the right person in place for every job is becoming acute. The potential shortfall means organizations must put succession planning at the top of their priority lists. Growing Your Company’s Leaders offers the results of a study of five global leaders in succession strategy: Dow Chemical, Dell Computer, Eli Lilly, Pan Canadian Petroleum, and Sonoco. Readers will learn what these and sixteen other high-profile organizations are doing to identify, secure, and prepare the next generation of leaders.

This book examines:

• the link between succession management and business strategy
• the architecture of good plans and how technology can make them better
• the importance of individual employee development
• why senior management support is crucial
• how to monitor the effectiveness of the succession management system.

About the Authors

Robert M. Fulmer (Santa Barbara, CA) teaches at Pepperdine University and is the academic director of Duke Corporate Education. His books include Leadership by Design and The Leadership Investment.

Jay A. Conger (Manhattan Beach, CA) is Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California and teaches at London Business School. He has written or contributed to numerous books, including Corporate Boards