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

Fulmer (Pepperdine University) and Conger (London Business School) examine how several American companies have applied succession management practices to identify, track, and develop their future leaders. They discuss corporate strategy implications, the sponsors and owners of the succession system, talent selection, career paths, feedback tools, tracking, and metrics.
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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 (0-8144-0558-4). 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 .

"1. Succession Management: The New Imperative

A. Historical Development

B. The Re-Invention of Succession Planning

C. Dynamic New Systems

D. Why the Renewed Interest Today

E. Purposes of Succession Management

F. Underlying Dimensions of a Winning Approach

G. Key Dimensions of an Effective System

H. Summary

2. Building a Successful Succession Management System

A. Who Best to Run

B. Case Examples

C. Communicating the Overall Strategy

D. Always Improving the Process

E. It’s Going Nowhere Without the Boss

F. Technology and Overcoming Georgraphy

G. Below the Executive Level

H. Principles of Systems Design

I. So What Have We Learned Thus Far

3. The People Behind Succession Management

A. The Role of 360 degree Feedback

B. Process for Picking Winners

C. Case Examples

D. Identification Tools

E. Talent Pools

F. Competency Models

G. Best Practice Insights

4. Growing Future Leaders

A. Losing the War For Talent

B. The Voice of the Leader

C. Developing a Developmental Perspective

D. Six Developmental Tools That Work

E. Conclusions

5. Measuring and Assuring Success

A. Qualitative and Quantitative Measures

B. Case Examples

C. Key Criteria

D. Future Goals

E. Key Best Practice Insights

6. The Future of Succession Planning"