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Succession: Are You Ready? Hardcover – February 10, 2009

by Marshall Goldsmith (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 87 ratings
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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.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    130 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harvard Business Review Press
  4. Publication date
    February 10, 2009
  5. Dimensions
    4.6 x 0.8 x 7.2 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1422118231
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1422118238
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A 'handbook' in every sense, the latest offering from leadership authority Marshall Goldsmith is a compact field guide to letting go, gearing up, and passing the baton" --T+D Magazine

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.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard Business Review Press; 1st edition (February 10, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 130 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1422118231
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1422118238
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.6 x 0.8 x 7.2 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 87 ratings

About the author

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Marshall Goldsmith

Marshall Goldsmith

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Dr. Goldsmith is a new member of the Thinkers 50 Hall of Fame. He is the only two-time Thinkers 50 #1 Leadership Thinker in the World. He has been ranked as the World’s #1 Executive Coach and Top Ten Business Thinker for eight years. Marshall was chosen as the inaugural winner of the Lifetime Award for Leadership by the Harvard Institute of Coaching.

Dr. Goldsmith is the author or editor of 41 books, which have sold over 2.5 million copies, been translated into 32 languages and become listed bestsellers in 12 countries. Amazon.com recently recognized their ‘100 Best Leadership & Success Books’. His books, Triggers and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, were both recognized as being in the top 100 books ever written in their field. Marshall is one of only two authors with two books on the list. His recent book, How Women Rise, with lead author, Sally Helgesen, is a BookScan #1 book for Women.

Marshall’s other professional acknowledgments include: Global Gurus - the inaugural Corps D ’Elite Award for Lifetime Contribution in Leadership and Coaching, Harvard Business Review - World’s #1 Leadership Thinker, Institute for Management Studies - Lifetime Achievement Award for Leadership Education, American Management Association - 50 great thinkers and leaders who have influenced the field of management over the past 80 years and BusinessWeek - 50 great leaders in America.

Dr. Goldsmith served as a Professor of Management Practice at the Dartmouth Tuck School of Business. His Ph.D. is from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management - where he was the Distinguished Alumnus of the Year. His MBA is from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business - where he was the Distinguished Entrepreneur of the Year. He is one of a select few executive advisors who has worked with over 200 major CEOs and their management teams. He served on the Advisory Board of the Peter Drucker Foundation for ten years. He has been a volunteer teacher for US Army Generals, Navy Admirals, Girl Scout executives, and leaders of the International and American Red Cross – where he was a National Volunteer of the Year.

Dr. Goldsmith has over 1.3 million followers on LinkedIn. His YouTube videos have over 3 million views. Hundreds of his articles, interviews, columns, and videos are available online at www.MarshallGoldsmith.com for viewing and sharing. Visitors have viewed, read, listened to, downloaded, or shared his resources tens of millions of times

To reach Marshall:

Marshall@MarshallGoldsmith.com • www.MarshallGoldsmith.com

Phone: (858) 759-0950 • Fax: (858) 759-0550

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
87 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Chuck Bolton
5.0 out of 5 stars Successful Succession
Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2009
Verified Purchase
Marshall Goldsmith's latest book, Succession: Are You Ready?, describes in detail for CEOs and other executives the skill sets and mindset to ensure executive succession is successful. Addressing a little-discussed topic--making a leadership transition that is smooth, graceful and highly effective -- Marshall describes how to stack the deck for a successful transition for both the current CEO and the successor. Like his 2007, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, I'll be distributing Succession to my clients and colleagues. Well done Marshall!
3 people found this helpful
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Momma
4.0 out of 5 stars Great for old CEOs
Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2018
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Well written, but not for an average person. This book was written for those in corporate CEO roles nearing retirement.
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Agnes Mura, MA MCC
5.0 out of 5 stars truthful, pragmatic and human
Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2013
Verified Purchase
Marshall has a knack for making delicate issues actionable, for calling on CEOs' integrity, generosity and humanity and inviting them to be wise, honorable senior leaders who leave a healthy legacy in their companies. Every decision step is addressed with healthy common sense based on the author's vast executive coaching experience. Very inspiring and useful!
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Terrence W Cavanaugh
5.0 out of 5 stars Great personal blueprint for transitioning
Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2019
Verified Purchase
Outstanding primer for any CSuite executive transitioned to their next chapter in life.
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Denice E Korcal
3.0 out of 5 stars Good advice
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2014
Verified Purchase
I wouldn't have minded a little more meat in this book. The advice was good, but it was repetitive and lacked depth.
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Donald Mitchell
5.0 out of 5 stars Advice for Leaving an Organization with a Better Chance to Succeed for Stakeholders
Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2009
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
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!
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Barton Breen
4.0 out of 5 stars Short, Sweet and Spoken with Authority
Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2009
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
Marshall Goldsmith, for those familiar with the Leadership consulting field as an academic or practitioner, is someone who needs very little introduction. He has an impressive list of books as well as a great deal of practical experience and is sought out regularly as a teacher for the elite business schools.

While he understates his qualifications to address things like strategic planning, shareholder value concerns and others that could be mentioned, he is unquestionably well qualified to address the issue of CEO succession in most any organization, large or small. His authorship of this small book in the "Memo to the CEO" series is one that is well considered and knowing these elements I entered into this short book expecting the material to be valuable.

In keeping with past books from this series, it reads like a series of memos given in a personal and off-the-cuff manner designed to be conversational and succinct. One gets the feeling reading it, that this represents the wisdom of a career and multiple experiences boiled down into short points that the author wishes he knew himself in his earlier experiences coaching CEOs through this difficult transition. The wisdom is personal and deals in the soft areas of this field like ego, personal feelings, the willingness and ability to let go and the ability to place the needs of an organization and a successor above one's own need to be the top dog.

Frankly, while some reading it may chafe a little at what feels like obvious wisdom, the reality is that most CEOs are strong, ego driven type A leaders who indeed do need to have these seemingly "obvious" elements explained and reinforced in a simple manner to break through those characteristics that have directly to their success. (Yes that's a pretty broad generalization, but then, the book itself can be said to be operating on this premise and given the high level generalization of the book itself seems to match this, it seems fair.)

Given this assumption, the elements of the book are laid out pretty well.

First, prepare yourself and evaluate yourself to address those "blind spots" that this task will expose. Ask yourself how ready and willing you are to give up the power and the limelight and begin to prepare. Then prepare yourself to move on and begin to actually take the steps internally you will need to resolve before the external steps can effectively taken.

Into this mix then can enter the vital step of choosing your successor (to the degree that task falls to you.) Determine if it will be an internal candidate or candidates or an external one. Based on this decision then plan how you will make the transitions and coach and enable that successor to develop the relationships within the organization they will need to build a platform for their own success.

The next portion is the most valuable in this reviewer's opinion. Goldsmith walks a leader through how to move from the position of power to one of encouragement to enable that successor to begin to fill the gap that is voluntarily and deliberately created. This is the area that is probably the least counter-intuitive and the one in which an executive is most likely to attempt to handle as a CEO dictating how things will happen. Yet, to attempt that in this context is to undermine the organization's next leader by making their transition openly dependent upon the old leader. Success depends upon stepping out from the shadow and the transition must take place informally before it takes place formally.

As things move toward completion the a few final nuances can be addressed.

Of course, even in a memo form, Goldsmith fills in the gaps with keen insights and apt anecdotes from his experience.

This book can be read in one reading and it's best to read through it in this manner I think, but then the value will be to return to the appropriate sections for a little reminder and enforcement along the way.

4 Stars.

Bart Breen
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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in Canada on March 10, 2016
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Basic but solid.
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