Growing Your Company's Leaders: How Great Organizations Use Succession Management to Sustain Competitive Advantage

Just how hard is it to keep good talent these days? Authors Fuller and Conger analyze companies such as Bank of America and Eli Lilly that overhauled the old-school executive "replacement list" strategy with succession management. These programs groom talented in-house executives to one day compete for executive-level positions. In order for this strategy to work, Fuller and Conger advise companies to make succession management a long-term goal within the organization and to, of course, get the CEO on board. Their studies suggest that the quicker a company can anticipate future shortages and set in motion a long-term plan to fill in those gaps, the more successful they will be at retaining and maintaining top talent. And that, for the authors, is the real bottom line. —Sara Grant