The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same – Colin R. Davis A recent report pointed how India Inc. spends so much on leadership development and succession planning, and still ends up importing CEOs from the outside. This is especially true of the technology sector. A lot of money and resources are going down the drain. Why does this happen? My assertion is this : The very context that organizations create for leadership development within their walls is dragging them down. Leadership development efforts are structured for 1) ensuring self-contained internal success. 2) escaping every stage, ongoing feedback from an external environment. And this creates a spiral of inconsistencies that feed off each other and jeopardise leadership development. We will examine five inconsistencies that flow from how leadership development efforts are structured for ensuring success and escaping feedback from an external environment. 1) A Predictable hierarchy that has no bearing on unpredictable success. Leadership development requires a set hierarchy, a ladder with clear rungs visible to everybody from the bottom up. People need to see how they are going to…