by Ram Charan
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Product Description
The universal laws of business success . . . no matter whether you are selling fruit from a stand or running a Fortune 500 company.
Have you ever noticed that the business savvy of the world's best CEOs seems like a kind of street smarts? They sense where the opportunities are and how to take advantage of them. And their companies make money consistently, year after year.
How different is it to run a big company than to sell fruit from a cart or run a small shop in a village? In essence, not very, according to Ram Charan. From his childhood in India, where he worked in his family's shoe shop, to his education at Harvard Business School and his daily work advising many of the world's best CEOs, Ram understands business as few can.
The best CEOs have a knack for bringing the most complex business down to the fundamentals -- the same fundamentals of the family shoe shop. They have business acumen -- the ability to focus on the basics and make money for the company.
What the CEO Wants You to Know captures these insights and explains in clear, simple language how to do what great CEOs do instinctively and persistently:
* Understand the basic building blocks of a business and use them to figure out how your company makes money and operates as a total business.
* Decide what to do, despite the clutter of day-to-day business and the complexity of the real world.
Many people spend more than a hundred thousand dollars on an MBA without learning to pull these pieces of the puzzle together. Many others lack a formal business education and feel shut out from the executive suite. What the CEO Wants You to Know takes the mystery out of business and shows the secrets of success used by business legends like Jack Welch of GE.
Amazon.com Review
Ram Charan learned about business from his family's shoe shop in India before attending Harvard Business School and going on to advise senior executives in companies large and small. His experiences taught him that universal laws apply "whether you sell fruit from a stand or are running a Fortune 500 company," and that the business acumen that comes from understanding these basics can be applied throughout any operation. What the CEO Wants You to Know is Charan's primer on this point, which he illustrates with explanations filtered through the eyes of street venders and other small shopkeepers. One, for example, involves a woman in Managua, Nicaragua, who sells clothing from a small cart and beats the oppressive interest rates on her loans and the puny profit margins on her goods with a skillfully selected inventory that is quickly and repeatedly turned over. Whether it's a corner merchant or a giant manufacturing concern, Charan notes, "the faster the velocity, the higher the return." Relating such thinking to cash generation, customer satisfaction, and other essentials, he describes the universal principles that help all companies make money. "What your CEO wants you to know is how these fundamentals of business work in your company," he writes before embarking on a very lucid explanation that can be quickly absorbed and put into practice. --Howard Rothman
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Common Sense made into Common Sense., 2008-07-20
Often I hear people say "anyone can do business, it's just common sense." So why do we have so many failing companies? Dr. Charan answered so many of the questions of why people screw up in the business world. He combined parts of "common sense business" (profit margin, velocity, growth, customers, etc.) into a concept he refers to as Business Acumen. Many businessmen tend to focus on a select few of these important aspects of business, and the others sneak up on them and result in massive profit loss or bankruptcy.
As a business major, not yet full-force in the business field, it inspired me to work hard and be the best in whatever job I do. I have both corporate and management experience, yet I still feel like work up until I've read this book has been meaningless. The book has inspired me to take part in every job I do, no matter how much the job seems to lack direction. It makes you strive to be the best, and to be noticed by your successors. It's a great book for a novice businessman like myself. GREAT READ!!!!!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
charan knows the worker, 2007-04-02
mr charan understnads and explains how profit works for companies and he understands why certain workers work really well in an environment and then fail in another.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Business Simplified, 2006-12-29
Ram Charan cuts right to the chase in this book. It's a short one, but it's packed with goodies. Charan explains the keys to making money and increasing wealth: 1) Business Acumen (the main components being cash generation, margin, velocity, return on assets, growth, and focus on the customer) and 2) Getting things done (which includes selecting the right people, increasing their capacity, and linking their efforts to a core set of business goals - developed using business acumen). Sounds simple, right? Frankly, it is. It's a no-nonsense explanation of what all managers, and all employees ought to know about business to enable them to gauge the performance of their company/organization/group, and put practical achievable plans in place to improve it.
Nick McCormick - Author, Lead Well and Prosper
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
simple, straightforward, short, repetitive, 2006-07-04
This book can be read in several hours and is definitely worth of the invested time. I am a total beginner in business, In fact, I study informatics. After reading this book I have a clear view of basic aspects of business. Also, it gave me a more clear understanging of what is a CEO's role.
let's summarize my thoughts:
+simple
+short (less then 130 little pages)
+gives a great overview of core business aspects
+good for beginners (contains even links to popular business web sites)
-focused on employees in a leader position
-focused on international (stock) companies. (I work at software companies, can't see, how could I apply the velocity principle here. We have no shareholders, no transparent assests, nor stock, nor transparent margins)
-quite repetitive. The word 'business acumen' is listed at least one hundred times. Some may find the repetition usefull...especially me not
p.s.: I've found this book on the recommended list of PersonalMBA (personalmba.com)
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Ok book but a little too wordy, 2006-02-08
Yes, it's a small book already but I thought the author could have got to the points sooner with a little less prose and more advise. I can see that he did a lot of work and is obviously an intelligent person it just as another reviewer put it "the book does not deliver on what the title suggests".
It's worth a read on a long airplane ride but not worth setting your career by.
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