Business Week, October 10, 2005 (in a story about talent management)

``Talent should be a weapon and should be used as a weapon,'' says Marc Effron, Hewitt's longtime leadership expert, now vice-president for talent management at Avon Products. ``But it's amazing how little attention companies put into this.''

Nevertheless, says Avon Products' Effron, ``you tend to see people glomming on to the latest fad or thing they heard about in a conference. But the more you rely on consultants, the more likely you are to fail.''

Industry Week, June 1, 2005 (in a story about building manufacturing leaders)

"[The Top 20 firms] understand that programs such as executive education, assignment-based development and mentoring are all good, but the only way they truly work is if senior leadership is involved in and accountable for the suecess of these initiatives," says Marc Effron, a global practice leader at Lincolnshire, Ill.,-based Hewitt Associates.

HR Magazine, June 1, 2005 (in a story about developing leaders)

Global HR services firm Hewitt Associates conducted a study comparing the companies on the list with 350 other U.S. companies and found that, "as baby boomers get ready to retire, the top 20 companies are ahead of the curve," says Marc Effron, global practice leader, leadership consulting, at Hewitt. "They realize their future success relies heavily on how well they are currently developing the next generation of leaders," he says.

"More to the point, they understand that programs such as executive education, assignment-based development and mentoring are all good, but the only way they truly work is if senior leadership is involved in and accountable for the success of these initiatives," adds Effron.

Business Week, April 4, 2005 (in a story about Dow Chemical's CEO succession process)

"The person they have might be ideal if the company's in a static environment, " says Marc Effron, who heads the leadership consulting practice at Hewitt Associates. "But how many companies are really in a static environment?"

VOCÊ S/A, September 2004 (leading Brazilian business magazine)

In a story on Leading the Way, the magazine presented the Three Leadership Truths with examples of companies who excel in each. Four pages of the magazine were dedicated to the story.

Business Week, April 30, 2004 (in a story about Qwest Diagnostics CEO succession)

Marc S. Effron, global practice leader for consultants Hewitt Associates Inc. (HEW ), says the careful succession planning at the Teterboro (N.J.)-based company will pay off with a new CEO who can hit the ground running. "It's incredibly unusual," says Effron of Freeman's efforts.

"They're going to see the benefits." "Part of the challenge in becoming successful is you become a little too caught up in your own abilities," says Effron. "If a CEO can look at himself as a caretaker of a firm, it's easier for him to hand it over to someone else."

Sacramento Bee, March 15, 2004 (in a story about training investments)

A study of 300 corporations nationwide found that a core group of some 20, including Intel Corp., FedEx Corp. and GE, were most successful in building leaders because they followed well-defined strategies and offered more training than other companies. "When Jack Welch retired in the late 1990s from GE, you had three CEOs in waiting," observed Marc Effron of Hewitt Associates in Illinois, which conducted the study. "It was the combination of the culture of the firm, the development experiences they had and the support they received from the CEO and the directors that allowed the company to produce this incredible pipeline of talent."

Economic Times (India), March 12, 2004 (in a story about succession planning)

Excerpt: Top 20 companies for leaders, a 2002 Hewitt Associates study of 240 major US companies, revealed that 73% of responding organisations had a defined succession-planning process in place. However, only 13% said that their organisations always use the succession plan well when making selection decisions. “This statistic really highlights the implementation challenge,” remarks Marc Effron, Hewitt’s Leadership Consulting Practice Leader.

“Organisations need to focus on what will enable their plans to actually work — lean design, simple administration, involved line managers. You win by execution, not by having artful design.” The five steps outlined in this article provide a framework for successfully designing and implementing a succession-planning programme.

Human Resources Magazine, February 5, 2004 (in a story about building leadership depth)

“This is a very positive sign because when senior management takes accountability for developing their best leaders, that’s when this process is most effective,” said Marc Effron, global practice leader for Leadership Consulting at Hewitt. “Our financial analysis of this data shows that CEO involvement is much higher in financially successful firms. The best CEOs spend 25 per cent or more of their time building leadership”

New York Times, January 14, 2004 (in a story about mentoring)

But in the rush to offer mentoring programs, some companies may be substituting quantity for quality, said Marc Effron, who heads the leadership consulting practice at the Hewitt Associates consulting firm. "There are a few great ones and a lot of not-so-great ones," he said.

In a study of 300 companies that was released in September, Hewitt found that while a mentoring program was an important component in producing leaders, it should not be the only one. "Some programs put too much pressure on a forced process," Mr. Effron said. "They make unnatural and awkward a very natural relationship."