Tesco
What The CEO Wants You to Know
Book

What The CEO Wants You to Know

Using Your Business Acumen to Understand How Your Company Really Works

Ram Charan
Crown, 2001
First Edition: 2001

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Editorial Rating

8

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Recommendation

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. This book's clear explanations of essential concepts will help you more deeply understand the vocabulary and ideas at the heart of business.

Take-Aways

  • Develop your “business acumen” by learning the essential forces that drive business.
  • The core of any business consists of customers, “cash generation, return on assets and growth.”
  • To prosper, your company must grow. Be sure it grows wisely.

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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    F. K. 7 years ago
    CoMon sense that most people miss about what a business does and keeps it going. It is not a paycheck generator or a place to take up your time until 5pm so you can go home.
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    D. R. 8 years ago
    Doesnt add much value.. Need more paragraphs
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    P. A. 10 years ago
    My first time using getAbstract and am suprised just to see an overview of this book and not access to the full material. I assuming there's a good reason for this but the information that is provided is relativly vague and only supports a general perspective of I believe to be the books true meaning.