Product Description

A leader's greatest challenge can be knowing when it's time to step aside. A great deal has been written for corporate boards on the issue of succession planning. But most executives have few resources to help guide them through the process. How do you start preparing yourself and your successor for your inevitable leadership transition?

In this concise book, leading executive coach and bestselling author Marshall Goldsmith offers candid advice on succession from the outgoing executive's perspective. From choosing and grooming a successor while sidestepping political minefields, to finally handing over responsibility, Goldsmith walks you through each step in the succession process.

Done right, your successor can enter to applause while you gracefully bow out and start the next chapter of your life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #102851 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 125 pages

Review
Succinct... interesting... This is a provocative and thoughtful book for CEOs - and other leaders.
--Management Today, Maarch 1, 2009

About the Author
Marshall Goldsmith has coached scores of top executives at the world's leading corporations. He has been ranked among the top ten executive educators by the Wall Street Journal and one of five most respected executive coaches by Forbes. The author of many books, including the bestselling What Got You Here Won't Get You There (Hyperion, January 2007), he is on the faculty of executive education programs at several of the world's leading business schools.

Customer Reviews

Advice for Leaving an Organization with a Better Chance to Succeed for Stakeholders

Then Moses bade his father-in-law farewell, and he went his way into his own land. --Exodus 18:27

The ultimate example of a leader who did a good job preparing his successor was Moses who nurtured and prepared Joshua to continue leading the Jewish people as they entered and conquered the Promised Land. God didn't take any chances of Moses hanging around to make Joshua's life difficult. God ordered Moses to stay behind and he died just after investing Joshua as the new leader.

Since then, it has largely been taken for granted that the CEO would stick around as long as the board or owners would allow it. Then, Jeff Sonnenfeld wrote his breakthrough book, The Hero's Farewell, which indicated that CEOs should leave without fuss and with a good leader in charge . . . and not hang around on the board. But it wasn't clear to most CEOs how to go about this. Some CEOs began offering counseling services to help make the transition.

Marshall Goldsmith has a wonderful way of taking the obvious . . . and getting unpleasant truths across in undeniable ways. He succeeds again in Success: Are You Ready? in showing CEOs how to make selecting and preparing a successor a positive step for the organization, the successor, the organization's stakeholders, and the departing CEO. I was particularly pleased with his practical advice to CEOs about how to figure out what they want to do next . . . and what their real choices are.

Give this book to anyone who is going to need to prepare a top-flight successor (an essential step for those who aren't CEOs . . . and want to be promoted).

Some may be troubled that the author's description of how to coach a successor means that an outside behavioral coach (such as the author) can probably do the job better and easier than the outgoing CEO. I thought that the advice was relatively balanced although clearly slanted toward hiring the outsider. Many CEOs aren't very good coaches: They've been dictators too long to shift. CEOs who haven't been great coaches for their colleagues shouldn't try to learn during the succession process.

I also think that most boards would learn a lot by reading this book. It will help board members realize some of the things that are likely to go wrong in the succession process and the encouragement that many CEOs need to do the right things.

Potential successors should also read the book and use its points to help negotiate how the transition period will operate.

Most short business books don't have much content. This one is an exception. It's a fast, but very valuable, read. Go for it!