Chi Chi Chia! A Review of “Grow your own Leaders”

Ben Nash — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:37:30 +0000

William C. Byham, Audrey B. Smith and Matthew J. Paese have written a power point…er…book detailing how to identify, develop and retain top leadership talent. In their very structured book entitled Grow Your Own Leaders, the authors provide a lesson plan to ch’ ch’ chia leaders. The process begins with their proposal of the current leadership crises. Spoiler alert!! Basically, because of the current generation of baby boomers in leadership positions, within the next couple of years there will be a shortage due to large flocks of retirees. This is a good thing for the authors; otherwise their book would be completely pointless. The solution to this is a provided in following chapter and it’s called “acceleration pools”. This congregation of potentials promotes a Darwinian thunderdome where two managers enter and one manager leaves. A meticulous read through the bullet points establishes some very clear advantages to this style of promotion and organizational management. However, it is made clear that this method is not easy.

The following chapters outline necessary steps involved with managing and watering the acceleration pool as the candidates grow or die. Briefly, these steps (order is important) involve

Identifying High Potentials

Understanding Organizational Talent

Strategies for Accelerating Development

Ensuring Acceleration Pool Success

Within each unit resides a formula that would impress Steven Covey. Each chapter begins with a nice inspirational quote that is usually attributed to a CEO of a fortune 500 company. Bullet points abound between vocabulary and anecdotes. Tables and figures cast buzzwords wide and far asunder. Between each segment are some lean paragraphs that attempt to fill in the details. Again, think of the speech accompanying a power point.

To be clear, the methods described in the book are not for traditional business models that rely on replacement-planning systems. In fact this book wouldn’t really be useful for anyone who is not a higher up. Specifically, CEOs and other executive stakeholders are the only people that would be able to find meaningful passages. If you are reading this book and you do not belong to this echelon you are most likely a candidate for one of the acceleration pools that is described in the very pages you are reading (because who else would read this). However, this will only serve to frustrate you as you are in no position to implement any of the action plans that are outlined; which again would most likely be beneficial to you. The one exception would be for an HR practitioner who may want to propose or adapt certain methods as they apply to their individual situations.

The book really reads like a textbook. Perhaps if I had the teachers’ edition I could sort through the information with more efficiency. It’s really as if the book was adopted from a power point presentation. Every other page contains at least 5 bullet points. Therefore, one could easily skip through to chapters if they knew what they were looking for. Otherwise, one has to sift through the dialogue as if searching for a nugget of gold in 1849. The end result is worth it, but it’s a lengthy, lonely process.

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Chi Chi Chia! A Review of “Grow your own Leaders”