Finding out leaders is difficult. Why is it difficult? Typically because it is difficult even to define what leadership is all about. Also, it is made even more difficult because of the pace at which we need to do things. However, unless you have fantastic leadership, the company starts floundering at some point in time.

This is what Ram Charan takes and looks deep at.

He looks at the conundrum of "how to get the supply of leaders at different levels?" and tries to answer the question of how does one plan for succession.

He advocates an apprenticeship model. This sounds really radical. However, as he points out, it is not as radical as it sounds first. The apprenticeship is the basis in which almost all the professions prospered in the previous centuries. It is still in vogue in professions such as Medicine and engineering and so on. People learn from the teacher / boss and learn the tools of the trade and then become master over a period of time.

However, the same is not really applied in the case of management.

And, Ram Charan points out that it is perhaps time that we started doing this.

He also looks at and gives a probable framework of evaluating people on leadership. That is a good framework. He gives plenty of examples of how different organizations started grooming leaders from early on. How to have a proper process in place for this identification and grooming. How to take bets on leaders from early on. How to separate temporary successes or failures from long term possibility of success or failures. How to look at different situations and why those situations might require completely different styles of leadership.

He talks about a set of key points : identification, nurturing, how to mentor the leaders, how to set challenging tasks to them early on to spot the real leaders, how to put a process of continuously offering them great tasks which will refine their skills, how to manage the talent pool of leaders, how to continuously monitor them and what kind of frame work might work to take care of all of these.

Made me wonder how I would go about if I have to look for leaders. Made me wonder whether I do any productive and useful mentoring. I was also thinking about who are the potential leaders around me. There seem to be a number of them.

Very good book for any one who is passionate about leadership.  For anyone who wants to mentor and nurture talent under him. For both the bosses and the HR teams.