Biography

Dr. Noel M. Tichy is a Professor of Management & Organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

In the mid 1980s, Dr. Tichy was head of GE’s Leadership Center, the fabled Crotonville, where he led the transformation to action learning at GE. Between 1985 – 1987, Dr. Tichy was Manager of Management Education for General Electric where he directed its worldwide development efforts at Crotonville. Prior to joining the Michigan faculty, he served for nine years on the Columbia University Business School faculty.

Professor Tichy is the author of numerous books and articles. His most recent book is SUCCESSION: Mastering the Make or Break Process of Leadership Transition (Penguin 2014). He has also written JUDGMENT ON THE FRONT LINE: How Smart Companies Win by Trusting Their People (Penguin 2012, with Chris DeRose), JUDGMENT: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls (Portfolio 2007, with Warren Bennis), THE ETHICAL CHALLENGE: How to Lead with Unyielding Integrity (Jossey-Bass 2003, with Andrew McGill), THE CYCLE OF LEADERSHIP: How Great Leaders Teach Their Companies to Win (Harper-Collins 2002, with Nancy Cardwell) and THE LEADERSHIP ENGINE: How Winning Companies Build Leaders at Every Level (with Eli Cohen), named one of the top 10 business books in 1997 by BusinessWeek. He is co-author of EVERY BUSINESS IS A GROWTH BUSINESS (with Ram Charan), published October 1998 (Random House). In addition, Tichy is also the co-author of CONTROL YOUR DESTINY OR SOMEONE ELSE WILL: How Jack Welch is Making General Electric the World’s Most Competitive Company (with Stratford Sherman). Tichy has long been regarded as a staple of management literacy as noted by his rating as one of the “Top 10 Management Gurus” by BusinessWeek and Business 2.0. He has served on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Review, Organizational Dynamics, Journal of Business Research, and Journal of Business Strategy and was the founding editor and chief of HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT.

Noel Tichy consults widely in both the private and public sectors. He is a senior partner in Action Learning Associates. His clients have included: Best Buy, GE, PepsiCo, Coca Cola, GM, Nokia, Nomura Securities, 3M, Daimler-Benz and Royal Dutch Shell, Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group, FastRetailing, IBM, Intel and Intuit.

Featured Books
Judgment on the Front Line
Noel Tichy and Chris DeRose
Front-line employees who deal directly with customers are the face of any organization. Not only do they have the most impact on how a brand is perceived, but they are also the most valuable source of insight into what customers want and how to give it to them. Unfortunately, as management experts Chris DeRose and Noel M. Tichy explain, most organizations don't know how to evaluate the risk of...
Succession: Mastering the Make or Break Process of Leadership Transition
Noel Tichy
Noel Tichy draws on decades of hands-on experience working with CEOs and boards to provide a framework for building a smart, effective transition pipeline, whether for a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, a family business, a small start-up, or a non-profit. Through revealing case studies like Hewlett Packard, IBM, Yahoo, P&G, Intel, and J.C. Penney, he examines why some companies fail and others...