Are many of your key managers and executives well into their fifties or beyond? Are you concerned about developing your organization’s next generation of leaders? Is succession planning a growing issue as you look ahead a few years? Could lack of “leadership bench strength” constrain your organization’s growth?

A key element in top performing organization’s enduring success is growing talent internally through leadership development programs. But most organizations have put very little time and effort into a structured leadership development program. That’s been especially true during the last two years of economic turmoil.

If your organization is one of the many without a leadership development program, time is running out. Many of your key leaders are getting ready to leave and move on to their next phase of life (fewer are outright retiring these days.) Now is the time to grow your next generation of leaders.

Dan Tobin’s new book, Feeding Your Leadership Pipeline, is a very timely and highly practical guide. Dan pulls together his extensive leadership development experience into a concise, engaging, and extremely helpful how-to format. His examples, charts, sidebars, checklists, and writing style make this gem a rare book that’s both entertaining and a highly useful reference manual.

In his Introduction Dan writes, “the focus of this book is not on best practices, which may be only marginally relevant to the small to mid-sized company, but on excellent practices from many companies, large and small, and on approaches to help companies of all sizes develop their next generation of leaders.” He organizes the book around his Leadership Development Program (LDP) model. Its four main components are 1. Education sessions, 2. Experiential and action learning, 3. Individual development plans and guidance, 4. Mentoring, coaching, and reinforcement.

One of the very helpful features of Feeding Your Leadership Pipeline is how Dan pulls together a variety of fairly well known assessment, feedback, planning, and other leadership development tools into an integrated system. I was hired by Dan a few years ago to deliver leadership education sessions when he was running a global Leadership Development Program for a high tech company. I was impressed then by the structured program he’d put together. But it wasn’t until he asked me to review the manuscript for this new book that I came to appreciate the full extent of his approach and expertise. Now is the time to develop your organization’s leadership. Feeding Your Leadership Pipeline provides a crisp and practical blueprint to structure your program.