This book is awesome - not just theory!August 25, 2007 I really enjoyed this book - I was able to apply it to my own career and validate what it takes to move as well as use it with my teams to help them figure it out. It's clearly written and easy to apply in any large corporate setting.
I wish they provided a table (Skills, Time Application and Values) for all the passages - not just the first one from an Individual Contributor to a first line manager. I had to construct those myself...
Highly recommended!
Ravi
manangement guidanceJuly 20, 2007 0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The authros present a pretty good set of guidelines with dos and donts for forming leaders in th workplace and recognizinf those thay wont cutit and how to dispose/retransition them.
Use this book to Develop YourselfMay 28, 2007 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The downside of this book is no color inside and few visuals.
Great book for managing your own development 'climbing the ladder' of transitions because the book has defined competencies by level and examples, which you can consider for yourself & situation.
MUST READ for aspiring HR managers and line managers serious about talent management. Should be in any HR degree curiculum !
Know as "The Book" in response and solution to "The War for Talent", which unlocks the secrets of GE talent management.
A thoughtful and helpful look at the upward transitionsMay 22, 2007 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book gives you a thoughtful and reasoned look at the upward transitions process. It does an excellent job of outlining the needs and potential problems at each career stage. The advice is usable by three groups of potential readers.
You should buy this book if you are a senior manager, human resources executive, or board member in a company of any size who wants to understand the dynamics of leadership development/succession planning in a large company. The book outlines several transitions and the changes in skills and attitudes that are needed at each one, along with relevant pitfalls.
You should buy this book if you are a manager on an upward career trajectory and you want to learn what's ahead and what skills and attitudes you need to develop as well as what possible problems lie in wait. The chapter that describes your next transition will outline what you will have to do and what you will have to do better.
You should buy this book if you supervise other managers and you want some insight into analyzing performance issues and helping your people develop.
What are the negatives?
This book is written for people in big companies. With the exception of a couple of pages early in the book, managers in small to mid-sized businesses will need to figure out how this applies to them. This is not a big issue because of the range of material covered and the clarity of the presentation, but it still will be irritating to some readers.
The big company whose shadow falls across this book is General Electric. That's not a bad thing in itself. GE does a marvelous job of leadership development. What you have to watch for, though, are unstated assumptions that other companies have the same culture and values as GE, or even that values matter as much everywhere else.
For example, the authors state that "formal training for first line managers is fairly common." That's not true in the majority of US companies today.
The authors state that "managers who aren't cut out for this role should be put on an individual contributor track." But in many companies there is no individual contributor "track." Only managing others leads you to higher status and higher pay.
While there is a lot of good material handling the various transitions, you won't find much on deciding who should be promoted in the first place. But that's the only significant gap I see in this excellent book. Judging who to promote is a key decision and a key component of the success of the promotion.
The bottom line is that this is an excellent book, filled with material that can be used by people in many different situations.
an undergraduate perspectiveApril 24, 2006 4 out of 4 found this review helpful
In my reading of the "Leadership Pipeline," I found it to be a fascinating look at all levels of management, albeit a somewhat unconfirmable one. The purpose of the book seems to be to outline, then advocate what it calls "The Leadership Pipeline." Think of it like a long drainage pipe system, with six intersections symbolizing six transitions in management (each of which can run smoothly or become clogged based on managers values and behavioral traits), all the way from entry level employee to CEO. The book takes the approach that every entry level employee, if they possessed the drive and willingness to change can become the CEO of any company they choose. In fact, the book so strongly advocates this position that it maintains that this is the best way to create the ultimate CEO from the very first pages.
It is this belief that I found to be somewhat irritating as I read through the book. The notion that an entry level worker based in sales with no degree could become a more qualified CEO than their more educated counterparts was a little hard for me to swallow. The Leadership Pipeline does not actually advocate replacing more educated workers with less educated ones, but it does continuously profess that the best way to groom a leader at any leadership level is to ensure that they have gained the experience necessary by following all of the steps of the leadership pipeline model which have come before it, and all of those steps should be taken within the same company. It seems almost as concerned with advocating the implementation of its own design as it does offering constructive criticism to better the current system of business management. The book also fails to take into account what happens to the worker who gets laid off due to corporate takeovers, mergers, etc.
That said, it does offer a number of good points on how to become a more effective leader. The most important of which is how it dispels the notion that one can cling to the elements of their job which made them successful at previous management levels. At each level of management (the book professes) a worker must take a step back and re-evaluate what exactly their job at that level becomes. It offers means by which one can generate positive communication and feedback so that the manager can truly become an effective leader. The way it goes on to illustrate the key traits of successful managers at each "intersection" by way of useful real life examples and anecdotes was one of the books major strengths and helped the flow tremendously. The language in which the book is written is geared to any audience, and in light of the admittedly dry material, it made it run more smoothly.
One of the biggest problems I had with the book was it seems to have been written for an incredibly limited audience. The advice it gives on how to eliminate management problems at most of the "intersections" could only really be applied by extremely high levels of management which few actually achieve. I must admit I am still an undergraduate college student so my perspective is limited, but I cannot imagine how a great number of the concepts in this book would be useful to anyone other than those in the realm of vice president or CEO, and even if the principals were appropriate to that audience, they would have to be a member of a global multi billion dollar corporation with similar levels of management and positions discussed in the book.
