Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #84696 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

Synopsis
Ram Charan has seen the business world from both ends of the spectrum. While growing up in India, working in his family shoe business, he came to understand how a business works and the critical elements of success: return on assets, growth, rate of inventory turnover, understanding your customers, and the changing marketplace. After coming to America, teaching at Harvard, and advising world class CEO's like Jack Welch of GE, Jac Nasser of Ford and Chad Holliday of DuPont, he knew that there are universal laws of business success and that they are the same for street peddlers and Fortune 500 CEO's. A powerful lesson in what is really important in business, this remarkable book takes the lessons of the peddier and reveals how they can be used by the rest of us. Reminiscent of best-sellers like Who Moved my Cheese? and The One-Minute Manager, What the CEO Wants You to Know is simple, direct and of immense use to everyone in business - from those just starting their careers who want to master the essentials of business, to senior executives who need to be reminded that success in the executive suite is based on the same common sense and universal business laws that make or break the corner fruit stand.

Customer Reviews

Business Basics in Simple Concepts and Metaphors
Dr. Charan has used his decades of experience with top CEOs to write a book that explains the overall concepts and focus of a successful business using simple metaphors. "The best CEOs . . . are able to take the complexity and mystery out of business by focusing on the fundamentals." Then they make sure everyone knows those fundamentals. If you work in a small part of a large organization and don't understand how what you do contributes to the whole, this book will be a revelation to you. If you do not understand how business people think and would like to learn, this book will help you more than any five courses you could take.

The book is organized into four parts.

In part one, you learn the universal language of business though concepts like inventory, product mix, merchandising, pricing, return on assets, customer focus, product quality, cash generation, growth, and finding out what you need to change from customers. The primary metaphor used here is that of a street vendor who is selling fruit in India and cannot afford to have a bad day. Dr. Charan fleshes out the examples by referring to his family's shoe business, and to decisions taken by leading executives he has worked with (like Jack Welch of General Electric, Jac Nassar of Ford, and Dick Brown at EDS).

In part two, he talks about how to use these concepts in the real world. His key point is to take the measurements and create a focus on 3 or 4 key activities that will make the most difference. He also relates this work to expanding the value of the company's share price.

In part three, he turns his attention to getting key tasks done. This involves putting the right people in the right jobs, improving group effectiveness (usually by putting in place activities that provide more timely focus), and how to lead change. Dick Brown is the key example in this last area.

In part four, you pay attention to what you need to do to aply these concepts to your own situation so you "become a businessperson first" in your approach to everything. This part gives you help with assessing the whole business, cutting through complexity, providing focus, helping others expand their abilities and synchronize with their colleagues to be more effective, and being a leader (regardless of your role now).

You are left then with the challenge of how you, the reader, can help the company make more money in the next two to three months.

The book is quite simple and can be read fairly quickly. I think that few will be confused by it. If you have questions, ask someone who has some business education to help you.

The book's great strength is its simplicity. It takes business concepts and approaches down to the lowest common denominator. For many people, this will provide a great advance over doing what is best for the way you are measured in your part of the organization. But you will have to get those measurements changed if you want focus and behavior to improve in a lasting way.

The book's weaknesses are in four areas. First, the street vendor and shoe company examples won't work for everyone. I suspect that a carefully drawn lemonade stand example would have worked better since almost everyone in the United States has either had one of those or been a customer of one.

Second, it is a little opaque from the material here how to find the key leverage points to improve the business. Talking to your customers will get their issues, but then what do you do next? This subject implies doing some systems thinking, and the basis for doing that work isn't laid here.

Third, the material on stock price improvement is weak. It also doesn't have any connection to a simple example. You are just expected to take his conclusions. It would have been easy to strengthen this section by extending the analogy of how a family that depends on a business feels when the business doesn't do well. I actually thought the Ford example was one of failure rather than success. Reasonable people will differ on these things.

Fourth, most businesses today need totally improved economic models rather than evolution of the ones they are using now. This book doesn't adequately surface that key point. In fact, the examples are drawn from companies that have done relatively little to change business models.

The person who will get the most benefit from this book will be the executive who wants to get her or his colleagues more involved in thinking like CEOs (and shareholders). You could take this book, and refocus it around simple examples that fit your business, and use examples of focus from things you are working on now. That would make this book extremely beneficial.

Help people understand what the issues are, how to think about those issues, encourage everyone to come up with better solutions, and make it simple and easy to experiment with new approaches. That approach can help you make progress much faster.

Take on the big picture!

Business Basics in Simple Concepts and Metaphors
Dr. Charan has used his decades of experience with top CEOs to write a book that explains the overall concepts and focus of a successful business using simple metaphors. "The best CEOs . . . are able to take the complexity and mystery out of business by focusing on the fundamentals." "And they make sure everone in the company . . . understands these fundamentals." If you work in a small part of a large organization and don't understand how what you do contributes to the whole, this book will be a revelation to you. If you do not understand how business people think and would like to learn, this book will help you more than any five courses you could take.

The book is organized into four parts.

In part one, you learn the universal language of business though concepts like inventory, product mix, merchandising, pricing, return on assets, customer focus, product quality, cash generation, growth, and finding out what you need to change from customers. The primary metaphor used here is that of a street vendor who is selling fruit in India and cannot afford to have a bad day. Dr. Charan fleshes out the examples by referring to his family's shoe business, and to decisions taken by leading executives he has worked with (like Jack Welch of General Electric, Jac Nassar of Ford, and Dick Brown at EDS).

In part two, he talks about how to use these concepts in the real world. His key point is to take the measurements and create a focus on 3 or 4 key activities that will make the most difference. He also relates this work to expanding the value of the company's share price.

In part three, he turns his attention to getting key tasks done. This involves putting the right people in the right jobs, improving group effectiveness (usually by putting in place activities that provide more timely focus), and how to lead change. Dick Brown is the key example in this last area.

In part four, you pay attention to what you need to do to aply these concepts to your own situation so you "become a businessperson first" in your approach to everything. This part gives you help with assessing the whole business, cutting through complexity, providing focus, helping others expand their abilities and synchronize with their colleagues to be more effective, and being a leader (regardless of your role now).

You are left then with this challenge: "What are you going to do to help your company's money making in the next sixty to ninety days?

The book is quite simple and can be read fairly quickly. I think that few will be confused by it. If you have questions, ask someone who has some business education to help you.

The book's great strength is its simplicity. It takes business concepts and approaches down to the lowest common denominator. For many people, this will provide a great advance over doing what is best for the way you are measured in your part of the organization. But you will have to get those measurements changed if you want focus and behavior to improve in a lasting way.

The book's weaknesses are in four areas. First, the street vendor and shoe company examples won't work for everyone. I suspect that a carefully drawn lemonade stand example would have worked better since almost everyone in the United States has either had one of those or been a customer of one.

Second, it is a little opaque from the material here how to find the key leverage points to improve the business. Talking to your customers will get their issues, but then what do you do next? This subject implies doing some systems thinking, and the basis for doing that work isn't laid here.

Third, the material on stock price improvement is weak. It also doesn't have any connection to a simple example. You are just expected to take his conclusions. It would have been easy to strengthen this section by extending the analogy of how a family that depends on a business feels when the business doesn't do well. I actually thought the Ford example was one of failure rather than success. Reasonable people will differ on these things.

Fourth, most businesses today need totally improved economic models rather than evolution of the ones they are using now. This book doesn't adequately surface that key point. In fact, the examples are drawn from companies that have done relatively little to change business models.

The person who will get the most benefit from this book will be the executive who wants to get her or his colleagues more involved in thinking like CEOs (and shareholders). You could take this book, and refocus it around simple examples that fit your business, and use examples of focus from things you are working on now. That would make this book extremely beneficial.

Help people understand what the issues are, how to think about those issues, encourage everyone to come up with better solutions, and make it simple and easy to experiment with new approaches. That approach can help you make progress much faster.

Take on the big picture!

Donald Mitchell, co-author of The Irresistible Growth Enterprise and The 2,000 Percent Solution

A solid lesson on basic business concepts
An expert can deconstruct a business down to its basic driving forces to diagnose how it is working. Now, you can do the same - with this concise guide from author Ram Charan, who refers to the ability to work with operational essentials as 'business acumen.' He bases his initial ideas on his family's shoe business in India. This family-owned business fought hard for every sale, and each night the relatives discussed what had happened during the day, which goods customers bought and what the store's competitors were doing. When he left home to study and, eventually, to become an author and consultant to global companies, Charan remembered those hardscrabble lessons. Here, he distills the core similarities between street vendors and global corporations in what amounts to a narrated business dictionary. We believe this book will help you more deeply understand the vocabulary and ideas at the heart of business, and recommends its clear explanations of essential business concepts.