Executive Selection: Strategies for Success

Rating:
Summary: Advice: get here before the lawyers do
Review: I can't believe no one has reviewed this great book yet! Most of my graduate class in executive assessment read it all in the first week--not a response most professors expect of busy students. As a management psychologist for 25 years before returning to teaching last year, my reaction to almost every page of this book was "yes, yes--you're right, corporations are never so embarrassingly irresponsible and irrational as when they pick their leaders (OK, it's a close tie with acquisition frenzy). This book presents clear, easy to understand, research on the selection of over 500 executives by senior execs attending seminars at the Center for Creative Leadership. The reserachers found that the processes used to select successful executives are clearly different than the techniques to select executives who "didn't work out" (failures are in the 50% range for this sample--no surprise given Hogan's widely accepted estimate of over 60% failures). The researchers note that it doesn't take much more time and effort to do this task in a way that can enormously--no, I mean astoundly--improve the probability of a successful selection. My students, at Alliant International University, are smart, but they haven't yet figured out why businesses don't just use the approach outlined clearly and justified by data in this book. That's why it makes such a great text for a professor--this book brings corporate politics, egos, turf protection, and communications (you thought it was only their own teenagers that executives can't communicate with?)right down to the level that students (or your own executive team) can't deny. If you are an executive, use this book, or you'll be sorry. If you're a lawyer--hmmm, would an executive team who ignored these data be culpable from a class action perspective if their brand new executive bombed? Don't ask me--but it is a great supplementary text book for Gen-X psychology students who love examples of Boomer bombers.