There are six leadership passages that a leader needs to go through. The book focuses on helping readers become familiar with the skills, time applications, and work values demanded by each passage, as well as this particular leadership gestalt.

Passage One: From Managing Self to Managing Others

  • Manageing self: They contribute by doing the assigned work within given time frames and in ways that meet objectives. By sharpening and boardening their individual skills, they make increased contributions and are then considered “promotable” by organizations. From a time application standpoint, the learning involves planning (so that work is completed on time), punctuality, content, quality, and reliability. The work values to be developed include acceptance of the company culture and adopting of professional standards.
  • Managing others: The skills people should learn at this first leadership passage include planning work, filling jobs, assigning work, motivating, coaching, and measuring the work of others.They must shift from “doing” work to getting work done through others. They must believe that making time for others, planning, coaching, and the like are necessary tasks and are their responsibility. More than that, they must view this other-directed work as mission-critical to their sucess.

    Passage Two: From Managing Others to Managing Managers

    Perhaps the biggest difference from the previous passage is that here, managers must be pure management. Now they need to divest themselves of individual tasks. The key skills that must be mastered duration this transition include

  • Selecting people to turn Passage One
  • Assigning managerial and leadership work to them
  • Measuring their progress as managers
  • Coaching them
  • Beginning to think beyond their function and concerning themselves with strategic issues that support the overall business One of the touch responsibility of managers of managers is to return people to individual-contributor roles if first-line managers don’t shift their behaviors and values

    Passage Three: From Managing Managers to Functional Manager

  • Skills:
    • New communication skills with individual contributors
    • Endeavor to understand areas that are outside their own experiences and also learn to value it
    • Team play with other functional managers and competition for resources based on business needs
    • Proficient strategiest, not only for their function but also for blending their functional strategy with the overall business strategy.
  • Time-application:
    • Participating in business team meetings and working with other functional managers
    • Delegating responsibility for overseeing many functional tasks to direct reports
  • Value
    • Long-term strategy, such as state-of-the-art, futuristic thinking for their function, is usually what gives most managers trouble.

      Passage Four: From Functional Manager to Business Manager

  • Receive significant autonomy
  • In charge of integrating functions
  • From looking at plans and proposals functionally to a profit perspective and to a long-term view
  • Balancing act between future goals and present needs and making trade-offs between the two

    Passage Five: From Business Manager to Group Manager

  • Similar managing self to managing others, a business manager values the success of his own business while a group manager values the success of other people’s businesses.
  • Evaluating strategy for resource allocation and deployment purposes.
  • Development of business managers
  • Portfolio strategy: Do I have the right collection of businesses? What to add, subtract and change?
  • Avoid wishful thinking and instead taking a hard, objective looking at their range of resources and making a judment based on analysis and experience.

    Passage Six: From Group Manager to Enterprise Manager

  • Long term visionary thinkers
  • Develop operating mechanisms to know and drive quarter-by-quarter performance that is in tune with longer-term strategy.
  • Well-developed external sensitivity and the ability to manage external constituencies, sense significant external shifts, and do something about them proactively.
  • Let go of the pieces - that is, the individual products and customers - and focus on the whole
  • Assume a team of high-achieving and ambitious direct reports.