Tomorrow’s CEOs Today
Top of the CEO shortlist is ensuring a deep supply of leadership talent, ready to step into senior roles when called upon. But the flow in the leadership pipeline has slowed to a mere trickle. And the impending retirement of the baby boomers coupled with steady declines in new entrants to the workforce adds up to an even greater shortage of talented managers in the coming years. This will make the “War for Talent” of the late 1990s look more like a street fight.
With these trends shaping the modern business landscape, it is no surprise that a key priority in today’s organizations is the creation of integrated systems and processes for churning out homegrown leaders. This is the “pipeline” question—taken from the recent book, The Leadership Pipeline—and it is the question weighing on HR/OD professionals.
We’re seeking answers to the pipeline question in several ways. First, we’re conducting research about how the leadership success formula changes as you climb the corporate ladder and following the implications for developing tomorrow’s CEOs today. Second, we’ve reworked the sprawling literature on derailment and cast it in light of what HR/talent professionals can do to prevent it. Third, we’re working with middle managers who have potential to make it to the top and learning with them about what works and what doesn’t. And we’re bringing together other leaders in the field to pool best practices, insights, and techniques for identifying and developing the leaders of tomorrow.
Selected Research
- Kaiser, R.B. (2004). Essential Insights for Developing Leaders across the Hierarchy. Edited book proposal under review.
- Kaiser, R.B. & Craig, S.B. (2004, April). Filling the Pipe I: Studying Management Development across the Hierarchy (.zip file). Symposium presented at the 19th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, IL.
- Kaiser, R.B. (2004, April). Filling the Pipe II: Best Practices in Organization-wide Management Development (.zip file). Practitioner Forum presented at the 19th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, IL.
- Kaiser, R.B. & Craig, S.B. (2004, April). What gets you there won’t keep you there: Managerial behaviors related to effectiveness at the bottom, middle, and top Slides (PDF file). Paper presented at the 19th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, IL.
- DeVries, D.L. & Kaiser, R.B. (2003, November). Going sour in the suite: What you can do about executive derailment (PDF file). Presented in S. Steckler, D. Sethi, & R.K. Prescott (coordinators), Maximizing Executive Effectiveness: Developing Your Senior Leadership workshop hosted by the Human Resources Planning Society, Miami, FL.
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