Deciding Who Leads: How Executive Recruiters Drive, Direct & Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Book review

Deciding Who Leads: How Executive Recruiters Drive, Direct & Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent. By Joseph Daniel McCool. Davies-Black Publishing, 248 pages. $27.95.

Journalist Joseph Daniel McCool tackles a very different subject than personal growth or leadership challenges: the importance of the executive search industry in effectively shaping the top executive cadre at major corporations holding enormous influence over global business.

McCool, a former editor of a publication covering the search industry, takes an appropriately balanced view of the subject. Recruiters are, he writes, "both part of the problem and part of the solution ... they can be both builders and destroyers of organizational culture, earnings, teams, product delivery schedules, customer relationships, R&D, momentum and succession plans."

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Of course, he's absolutely right. Decisions made about CEOs--and to a far lesser degree, CFOs--can impact all of those areas. He doesn't mention...