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High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders
by Morgan W. McCall Jr.
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Harvard Business Press (1998-01-15)
ISBN: 0875843360
EAN: 9780875843360
Dewey Decimal #: 658.40724
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 254 pages
Edition: 1
SKU: 6008-MMccall1998-R
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: HBP, 1998, later printing. Clean copy, inside & out; lightly read. 254-page HC. Slight spine tilt.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
How do you develop the people who will one day lead your company? This book challenges conventional wisdom about how to groom executives for the top positions in your firm. It presents a strategic framework for identifying and developing future executives that senior managers can use to find the "hidden" talents in their midst. The key is to look for the people with the capabilities to run the business tomorrow--not today. McCall demonstrates that the best executives aren't necessarily managers who possess a previously identified, generic list of traits or who have risen to the top through survival of the fittest. Rather, the real leaders of the future are those who have the ability to learn from their experiences and remain open to continuous learning. If these people get the right experiences on the job, they will have the ultimate opportunity to learn new executive skills--and it's the responsibility of the firm's current leadership, especially line management, to make that happen. Full of vivid real-life examples, High Flyers explains how senior managers can create an environment that supports the development of talent and link the firm's business strategy with the kinds of experiences people need if they are to lead a company in fulfilling its mission. The book also shows how individuals can take charge of their own development and avoid common pitfalls that lead to falling off the executive track. This revealing guide is for everyone in the organization who has responsibility for developing people--as well as for aspiring managers who want to learn what it takes to become truly effective leaders. For companies, High Flyers demonstrates the power of executive development as a competitive advantage and the way to ensure the best leadership for the future.
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Customer Reviews
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Packed with sensible and thought-provoking advice
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-03-27
Don't hold your breath if you're waiting for your company to hand out a blueprint for your professional growth as an emerging executive. In a book packed with sensible and thought-provoking advice, Morgan W. McCall Jr.'s overriding message is that aspiring executives are responsible for their own development. He believes that few organizations are structured to promote the proper training of young, promising executives, although they should do a better job. He says rising leaders should create their own breaks, embrace opportunities to gain experience, and view adversity as an ideal situation for learning. McCall hammers home the point that the only power you really have is over yourself. Be proactive, or pull up a lawn chair and watch as the parade passes. getAbstract wholeheartedly endorses the author's lessons on how to groom leaders and how to grow as a leader. If you want it, go and get it.
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An important Contrubtion
Rating  (5)
Date: 2005-11-25
As an avid read of "leadership development" books, I found High Flyers very stimulating and thought-provoking. While I believe that talent is more than "the ability to learn", I do believe leaders who have this quality are best able to leverage their God-given talents and gifts whatever they are. The most important contribution of this for me was the emphasis on the power of experience and the ability to learn from it. With so much emphasis of leadership development being about acquring knowledge and skills, I felt McCall brought balance to this over-emphasis.
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More about executives than leaders...
Rating  (2)
Date: 2002-01-18
15 out of 16 customers found this reveiw helpful
The author is a professor of management at USC, so his perspectives on leadership are limited to those qualities found in executives and in very large businesses that support the training of executives. The most helpful aspect of his book is that McCall urges large companies to develop systematic training for executive leaders, rather than leaving younger executives in a sink-or-swim situation. He also has a bias against ruthless, cut-throat competition and male testosterone-driven demonstrations of power and wealth that executives can get drawn into or promote.
Nevertheless, the book is limited: it says very little about leadership as a quality found in other people, other settings; implies that leadership is a unique quality of exceptional people that can be taught to those up-and-coming risers primarily; and supporting data is quite limited. He stumbles when he talks about leadership per se by using an example of a child violin prodigy, as if this child-becoming-virtuoso should be our model of leadership development.
It also is overwritten, the way stuff from Harvard Business School Press is overwritten: breathless, breathtaking, fawning over winners, etc.
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Decent book, especially if you are new to the field
Rating (4)
Date: 2001-07-21
1 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is a pretty good book for those new to the leadership literature. Its main point is that leaders are made, not born. I found it a little long for the point it was making, but thats probably because I've read other books in the area.
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A Process for Strategy-Driven Leadership Development
Rating (5)
Date: 2000-10-16
8 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
You will find a thoughtful, thorough process here for using a company's strategy to delineate what kind of leaders you will need, identify the leadership experiences that can create that type of leader, then to locate those who have the highest potential to develop those capabilities (those who learn rapidly and well), and to monitor progress. This is a very humane book that will help many avoid the painful career derailments that we read about all too often when a top performer suddenly crashes and burns in public.By comparison, most companies are looking for executives with the right stuff for today, not the future. Then in a Darwinian process of survival of the fittest, those with the best track records win the leadership roles. Professor McCall points out a very serious flaw in this model, in that many people progress without developing any better leadership skills. With more and more success, leadership skill may actually drop as strengths and competencies are more and more likely to turn into weaknesses as they become exaggerated and weaknesses stay weak. He uses a detailed case history of Horst Schroeder, who was fired as president of Kellogg's after only 9 months, to make these points. On the usually-correct assumption that your company has not yet brought this new model to bear, the author presents an excellent appendix for helping an individual executive to plan and implement one's own development. "The message of High Flyers is that leadership ability can be learned, that creating a context that supports the development of talent can become a source of competitive advantage, and that the development of leaders is itself a leadership responsibility." I suggest that you consider Jack Welch at General Electric as the embodiment of the truth of this statement. Now let me share my concerns about this book. Most companies change strategies at least as often as they change CEOs. Many do it even more often. The average life of a strategy has to be about 3-5 years. That's too short a time to be the context for a leadership development program, unless the new strategy requires exactly the same kind of leaders -- which is unlikely to be the case. In such environments, leadership recruiting probably deserves more attention than leadership development. On the other hand, strategy should not change so often. As my co-author and I point out in The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, it is possible to have a constant mission, vision, and strategy in the midst of a rapidly changing business environment if you think through the issues of potential volatility in advance. In that sort of company, this book's approach will prosper, as will the company and its stakeholders. I urge you to combine these perspectives and approaches in that way. My other concern is that mission, vision, and emotional context are more important than strategy to success. Professor McCall unaccountably ignored those other important "fit" and "development" issues. They should certainly be added back into this general model by anyone who is interested in systematically developing and providing more and better leadership. After you have finished reading this excellent book, consider the next governmental election you are asked to vote in. How could government leadership be improved by using a similar process to develop the next generation of elected candidates? Certainly, the task of governing is becoming ever greater yet the current process has all of the flaws of "survival of the fittest" that Professor McCall describes here. We can do better. How should we? How can this process be used in a nonprofit organization that you do volunteer work for?
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