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What The CEO Wants You to Know

Using Your Business Acumen to Understand How Your Company Really Works

by Ram Charan

Crown, 2001

Category: Leadership & Management

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What The CEO Wants You to Know

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In this summary you will learn

  • What it takes to have "business acumen;"
  • What basic factors drive any business
  • How CEOs and companies demonstrate "business acumen" through their use of management fundamentals

Why you should read What The CEO Wants You to Know

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. getAbstract believes 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.

About the Author

Ram Charan is an adviser to senior executives in companies of all sizes. He is the author of Boards That Work and the co-author of Every Business is a Growth Business and E-Board Strategies. He has written for the Harvard Business Review and other publications, and he taught at Harvard and Northwestern.

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