The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company by R Charan, S Drotter & J Noel, 2011 edition, published by Josse-Bass
If you take one idea away from this book, let it be that there is a natural hierarchy of management-leadership work in organizations. When people do the wrong work, usually by doing the job of the person below them, the organisation functions less efficiently. The text includes plenty of case studies which make it easy to see the theory in action in your own company.
Don’t read this to try and put the pipeline model into place in your company. Read it to understand which work should be carried out at which level. Then look at your work and your team’s: are you adding value at the right level? Can you see where your leadership pipeline is getting blocked?
Individual chapters provide a description of the work which should be carried out at each leadership-management level. Knowing this, you can step back and see the overall system in operation. It illuminates where it isn’t working well and equips you with the knowledge to diagnose the problems and generate your own solutions.