Leaders At All Levels

In Leaders at All Levels, Ram Charan addresses a pressing problem—a shortfall of leaders prepared to face the complexity of today’s business challenges. When so many companies struggle to find successors for their top jobs, and when so many leaders rise to the top but fail shortly thereafter, you know there’s something wrong with our succession and leadership development practices.

This book presents a radical and controversial remedy for the succession crisis: the Apprenticeship Model. This new approach to succession and leadership development makes it a hands-on activity for leaders and their bosses.

Under the Apprenticeship Model, people with the talent for leadership get stiff challenges hand-picked for them. Their bosses play a crucial role in accelerating their development. And HR gets a new job, as trustee of the Apprenticeship system. As a result, leaders at all levels develop faster and better, and boards have better choices when it comes time to choose the next CEO.

Leaders at All Levels describes how and why the Apprenticeship Model works and provides the tools you need to adopt it. Based on Charan’s decades of experience and keen insights into how leaders actually learn and grow, this book is filled with down-to-earth advice and real-world examples. It shows how you can leave an enduring legacy by building your company’s leadership bench strength. It also gives a road map for taking charge of your own growth. And it is a useful reference for best practices in choosing successors for leadership jobs at all levels, including the CEO.