The classic on the universal laws of business success, completely revised and updated for today's leaders

Completely rewritten for today's business world, What the CEO Wants You to Know, expanded and updated, written by bestselling author Ram Charan, describes the fundamentals behind every business, from street vendors in Mumbai, to Fortune 500 companies. Drawing on stories from Uber, Amazon, Apple, Toyota, Netflix, Lyft, The Limited, Walmart, GE and Starbucks, Charan, in the most accessible language imaginable, explains the ins and outs of how companies work, from gross revenue and operating costs, to inventory and cash flow, from turnover, profits and margins, to return on capital and accounts payable and receivable, from product quality to sales. A classic in the business literature, with hundreds of thousands of copies in print, this short and engaging book is like a miniature MBA course between covers.

For everyone who wants to master and understand the levers that drive a successful business, What the CEO Wants You to Know is the perfect answer.

Is your firm's board creating value--or destroying it?

Change is coming. Leadership at the top is being redefined as boards take a more active role in decisions that once belonged solely to the CEO. But for all the advantages of increased board engagement, it can create debilitating questions of authority and dangerous meddling in day-to-day operations. Directors need a new road map--for when to lead, when to partner, and when to stay out of the way.

Boardroom veterans Ram Charan, Dennis Carey, and Michael Useem advocate this new governance model--a sharp departure from what has been demanded by governance activists, raters, and regulators--and reveal the emerging practices that are defining shared leadership of directors and executives. Based on personal interviews and the authors' broad and deep experience working with executives and directors from dozens of the world's largest firms, including Apple, Boeing, Ford, Infosys, and Lenovo, Boards That Lead tells the inside story behind the successes and pitfalls of this new leadership model and explains how to:

- Define the central idea of the company
- Ensure that the right CEO is in place and potential successors are identified
- Recruit directors who add value
- Root out board dysfunction
- Select a board leader who deftly bridges the divide between management and the board
- Set a high bar on ethics and risk

With a total of eighteen checklists that will transform board directors from monitors to leaders, Charan, Carey, and Useem provide a smart and practical guide for businesspeople everywhere--whether they occupy the boardroom or the C-suite.

Finally, a book that brings the vision of truly good governance down to earth. Ram Charan, expert in corporate governance and best-selling author, packs this book with useful tools and techniques to take boards and their companies to a higher level of performance. Charan puts his finger on a growing problem for boards: the disconnect between directors' efforts and their results. The added time and attention boards invest is not translating into better governance that is, governance that adds value to the business.

Boards That Deliver gets beyond the rhetoric of corporate governance reform. It captures the tried-and-true practices used by high-performance boards. In contrast to experts who base prescriptions on number-crunching exercises, Charan identifies the real problems that drain directors' time and suppress their best judgments and explains clearly and succinctly how boards can solve those problems. These battle-tested solutions help boards achieve what rules and regulations alone cannot to get succession right, refine a winning strategy, and design a rational CEO compensation package.

Good governance requires leadership. Boards That Deliver is the no-nonsense guide for directors and CEOs who are rising to the leadership challenge to make their boards a competitive advantage.

How do some Companies Multiply their Market Cap several times over?

Learning
to build a high performing talent engine - today's
strategic imperative!

In this
book, General Atlantic's Operating Partner Anish Batlaw and
veteran business advisor and New York
Times bestselling author Ram Charan, show you how to
build and incentivize management teams that can multiply enterprise
value several times over in 4-5 years.

No
matter how high your company's growth goal is,
you'll get from here to there by learning from this
book's riveting narrative of the high-stakes personnel
decisions and bold actions taken by CEOs, investors, and boards who grew
six real--and world-class--companies, ranging from
ecommerce startups to major corporations like Johnson & Johnson.
Told from both authors' firsthand vantage point inside each
company, and from Batlaw's active role in shaping their
outcomes, TALENT offers a rare inside look at how shareholder value is
created when CEOs move with speed and accuracy to get the right
leadership teams in place.

How
can you be sure
that your company can grow its
value as much as these six companies did? By learning from the versatile
and replicable methodology presented in this
book, which has worked effectively across geographies,
cultures, and sectors. TALENT is the answer. Now is the
time.

How do you gain an edge in the digital world order?

Another book for the ages from a master . . . Particularly insightful is his emphasis on how the end-to-end individual consumer experience will separate winners from losers in our new digital age.--Fred Hassan, chairman, Caret Group; former CEO, Schering-Plough and Pharmacia

The old ways of creating competitive advantage for your business--such as building moats to ward off competitors--have become dangerous. Giants like Amazon and Alibaba are creating vast new market spaces through a deft combination of tools like machine learning and business savvy that reimagines customer experiences while generating immense shareholder value.

A handful of traditional companies, including Fidelity Investments, Walmart, and B2W, have adopted these new approaches to reinvigorate their businesses. Most, however, are stalled--and the clock is running out.

In this lively, accessible guide, Ram Charan, bestselling author and adviser to some of the world's top CEOs and boards, redefines competitive advantage for the digital-first era, offering a set of new rules to get ahead:

- Create an ecosystem with third-party partners to revolutionize and personalize the customer experience.
- Empower teams focused on a single task, building a social engine that drives constant innovation, fast execution, and customer satisfaction.
- Attract funders who understand the big picture: that beyond a certain scale, major upfront spending will turn into a cash-generation machine.

Filled with stories that peek behind the curtain of digital behemoths as well as traditional companies that have transformed their organizations, Rethinking Competitive Advantage offers concrete advice and methods to help you conceive of new market spaces and moneymaking models.

Competing against digital giants might seem daunting, if not impossible. The necessary computing power is within any company's reach. By borrowing from these digital winners' playbooks, traditional companies and upstarts alike can gain an upper hand. Whether you're in the C-suite or brainstorming the next big idea from your garage, Rethinking Competitive Advantage is the ultimate guide to creating competitive advantage today.

Radical Advice for Reinventing Talent--and HR

Most executives today recognize the competitive advantage of human capital, and yet the talent practices their organizations use are stuck in the twentieth century.

Typical talent-planning and HR processes are designed for predictable environments, traditional ways of getting work done, and organizations where lines and boxes still define how people are managed. As work and organizations have become more fluid--and business strategy is no longer about planning years ahead but about sensing and seizing new opportunities and adapting to a constantly changing environment--companies must deploy talent in new ways to remain competitive.

Turning conventional views on their heads, talent and leadership experts Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, and Dennis Carey provide leaders with a new and different playbook for acquiring, managing, and deploying talent--for today's agile, digital, analytical, technologically driven strategic environment--and for creating the HR function that business needs. Filled with examples of forward-thinking companies that have adopted radical new approaches to talent (such as ADP, Amgen, BlackRock, Blackstone, Haier, ING, Marsh, Tata Communications, Telenor, and Volvo), as well as the juggernauts and the startups of Silicon Valley, this book shows leaders how to bring the rigor that they apply to financial capital to their human capital--elevating HR to the same level as finance in their organizations.

Providing deep, expert insight and advice for what needs to change and how to change it, this is the definitive book for reimagining and creating a talent-driven organization that wins.

Inflation is here. Do you know how it's impacting your
company?

It's not just a matter of rising costs. Inflation eats cash,
squeezes margins, threatens working capital, and throws all your great
forecasts and plans into question. Its effect is cumulative and pervasive.

Yet this period of economic discontinuity is a huge opportunity
to come out stronger for those who know how to lead in the face of inflation
and a looming recession.

Ram Charan has guided hundreds of companies through many
tough business challenges. In the early 1980s, he helped GE preserve its
teetering credit rating in the face of double-digit inflation. Now, in Leading
Through Inflation, he brings the same common sense and wisdom that made his
book Execution, coauthored with Larry Bossidy, a long-time New York
Times bestseller.

This book will be your guide to avoiding the hazards of
inflation while positioning your company to thrive when the business cycle
stabilizes. It provides Ram's down-to-earth recommendations and real-world
examples to help you navigate a landscape that may be new to you.

As you learn to lead through inflation, you will be better prepared
for recession and stagflation as well. You will know how to protect your cash,
your customers, and your capital investments. Your psychology will shift from
anxiety and fear to optimism and excitement as you define the path to a
reimagined future.

Amazon's trillion-dollar success is the envy of everyone, but achievable by anyone.

What has propelled their record streak of growth? Their management system, and it can do the same for you no matter what business you are in or what level.

Learning it is as simple as six building blocks distilled by New York Times bestselling author and global CEO advisor Ram Charan and Julia Yang in The Amazon Management System.

The Ultimate Digital Engine that Powered Amazon's Unprecedented Growth and Shareholder Value Creation:

Building Block 1: Customer-Obsessed Business Model

Building Block 2: Continuous Bar-Raising Talent Pool

Building Block 3: AI-Powered Data & Metrics System

Building Block 4: Ground-Breaking Invention Machine

Building Block 5: High-Velocity & High-Quality Decision-Making

Building Block 6: A forever Day 1 culture.


From their high-velocity decision-making to their top talent hiring practices, the insider secrets behind Amazon's success are now within anyone's grasp, block by block.

Whether you are an established CEO or a recent college grad, this concise and actionable book will help your business win in a new digital era that demands nonstop innovation.

Set up your company for long-term success by building and reinforcing your leadership pipeline

In the newly revised third edition of The Leadership Pipeline, a team of veteran leadership practitioners delivers a practical and essential framework for identifying future leaders, assessing their competence, planning their development, nurturing their talents, and analyzing the results of your efforts. The work to be done, the required skills, time application, and the necessary work values for each leadership layer are clearly defined for the digital age. The book explains how to integrate your organization's leadership development process with a succession plan that provides your company with a ready supply of capable leaders.

You'll discover the tools and techniques you need to knit together your succession and leadership development programs and constantly renew your leadership pipeline. You'll also:

• Explore anecdotes and stories drawn from the authors' extensive experience with top companies that illustrate the principles discussed in the book
• Find ways to eliminate bias and tunnel vision when identifying leadership candidates
• Learn to objectively consider the efficacy of individual leadership candidates

A powerful resource for managers, executives, board members, and other business leaders at firms of all sizes, The Leadership Pipeline is an effective and insightful blueprint to future-proofing your company.

Set your sights on High-Potential leadership and help your organization thrive

In today's tumultuous and rapidly evolving business environment, High-Potential leaders are in high demand. Do you possess the relationship skills, strategic vision, innovation, and determination needed to thrive as a high-potential leader in your organization? New York Times bestselling author Ram Charan answers that question and helps you hop on the fast-track to leadership success in this insightful guide.

Traditionally, leaders have risen up through the ranks based on their cognitive abilities, analytical skills, thoroughness, and even perfectionist tendencies, but as modern businesses have moved to a more digitally-driven model, the criteria for leaders has markedly changed. The High-Potential Leader explains the modern business climate while highlighting the critical role relationship building, communication style, engagement, and ability to motivate and bring out the best performance in others play in becoming an impactful leader.

Whether you're just embarking on your leadership journey or are ready to make the leap to the next leadership level, Charan's real-world lessons and practical advice will help you discover who you are as a leader, chart your path, accelerate your growth, and ultimately, become the high-potential leader your organization needs to succeed.

The coauthor of the international bestseller Execution has created the how-to guide for solving today's toughest business challenge: creating profitable growth that is organic, differentiated, and sustainable.

For many, growth is about home runs--the big bold idea, the next new thing, the product that will revolutionize the marketplace. While obviously attractive and lucrative, home runs don't happen every day and frequently come in cycles.

Products like Kevlar, Teflon, and the Dell business model for selling personal computers may be once-in-a-decade phenomena. A surer and more consistent path to profitable revenue growth is through singles and doubles--small day-to-day wins and adaptation to changes in the marketplace that build the foundation for substantially increasing revenues. The impact of singles and doubles can be huge. They are not only the basis for sustained revenue growth but, in fact, the foundation for home runs. Singles and doubles provide the discipline of execution, an absolute necessity for successfully bringing a breakthrough technology to market or implementing a new business model.

Inherent in this way of thinking is the revolutionary idea that growth is everyone's business--not solely the concern of the sales force or top management. Just as everyone participates in cost reduction, so must everyone be engaged in the growth agenda of the business. Every contact of each employee with a customer is an opportunity for revenue growth. That includes everyone from the people working in a company's call center handling customer inquiries and complaints to the CEO.

In this trailblazing book, Ram Charan provides the building blocks and tools that can put a business on the path to sustained, profitable growth. For more than twenty-five years, Ram Charan has been working day in and day out with companies around the world. The ideas he has developed for solving the profitable revenue growth dilemma facing many businesses are based on personally seeing what works in real time. These are ideas that have been tested across industries and that deliver results, and they can be put to use starting Monday morning.

Las empresas del siglo XXI necesitan un nuevo tipo de líder para enfrentarse a los enormes desafíos que presenta el mundo actual, cada vez más complejo y cambiante. Ram Charan, considerado por la revista Fortune como el asesor más influyente del mundo, presenta en este libro una estrategia progresiva que todo aquel con alto potencial necesita para maximizar su talento en cualquier empresa. De igual modo, explica a los altos directivos, a los ejecutivos de recursos humanos y a otros líderes, cómo identificar a sus líderes de alto potencial y cómo ayudarles para que consigan un desarrollo superior al de sus competidores.

Traditionally, leaders have risen up through the ranks based on their cognitive abilities, analytical skills, thoroughness, and even perfectionist tendencies, but as modern businesses have moved to a more digitally-driven model, the criteria for leaders has markedly changed. The High-Potential Leader explains the modern business climate while highlighting the critical role relationship building, communication style, engagement, and ability to motivate and bring out the best performance in others play in becoming an impactful leader.

This book is a most important contribution for both new and experienced directors, addressing contemporary corporate governance. The 14 practical questions represent the most vital issues that boards need to proactively address and are particularly crucial now as boards deal with the aftermath of the global financial tsunami.
--Thomas J. Neff, chairman, U.S., Spencer Stuart

If Corporate America's board members had answered these questions, the crisis of '08 would have been avoided. The book is that powerful. It should be required reading in every boardroom, executive suite, and business school on the planet. This book with its singular wisdom could change the face of corporate governance--with huge dividends to shareholders and society.
--Ralph Whitworth, principal, Relational Investors LLC

Ram Charan always seems to get it right. Owning Up not only asks the right questions, it gives answers that can make a real difference for improving board performance.
--James M. Kilts, former chairman and CEO, The Gillette Company

As always, well-reasoned, insightful, and thought-provoking. A work that every director will find of value, particularly given the intense pressure of these unprecedented economic times.
--Professor Charles M. Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware

Here is the book that every corporate director needs today. With his decades of insider experience, Ram Charan brings more wisdom and insight to this subject than anyone else I know.
--Geoff Colvin, Fortune editor and author, Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

*A Wall Street Journal bestseller*

The forces driving today's world of structural change create sharp bends in the road that can lead to major explosions in your existing market space. But exponential change also offers exponential opportunities. How do you leverage change to go on the offense? The Attacker's Advantage is the game plan for winning in an era of ambiguity, volatility, and complexity, when every leader and every business is being challenged in new and unexpected ways.

Ram Charan, harnessing an unequalled depth and breadth of experience working with leaders and companies around the globe, provides tested, practical tools to help you:

Build the perceptual acuity to see around corners and detect, ahead of others, those forces -- especially people, who are the catalysts of change -- that could radically reshape a company or industry

Have the mindset to see opportunity in uncertainty

Commit to a new path forward despite the unknowns, positioning your business to make the next move ahead of competitors

Break the blockages that can hold your company back

Know when to accelerate and when to shift the short-term and long-term balance

Make your organization agile and steerable by aligning people, priorities, decision-making power, budgeting and capital allocation, and key performance indicators to the new realities of the marketplace

The Attacker's Advantage provides a stark and simple challenge: stay in a legacy world of incremental gains or defensiveness, or be an attacker by creating a new world, scaling it up quickly, ahead of the traditional players.

Digitally transform your organization, one manageable step at a time

In The Digital Leader: Finding a Faster, More Profitable Path to Exceptional Growth, a team of visionary entrepreneurs delivers an authoritative and engaging roadmap demonstrating how to digitalize your business by taking small, achievable steps that yield measurable, near-term results. In this handbook of concrete strategies and methods, the authors show you how to pinpoint and implement bite-sized projects that sync up with your business priorities.

You'll learn how to find and choose between the digital enablement options available to you while discovering the tools you need to explain their value to stakeholders and get much-needed buy-in from executives, managers, and employees. You'll also:

• Learn about the value of experimentation, continuous innovation, and how to generate dramatic transformation by using incremental changes to your advantage
• Find out how to digitalize one piece of your business at a time, instead of taking on a gargantuan transformation all at once that is destined for failure
• Discover how to straddle the technology and business worlds and help define each of them to the other

A can't-miss resource for executives, managers, and other business leaders, The Digital Leader also belongs in the bookshelves of IT and data professionals seeking to maximize their impact on the businesses around them.

Breaking away from the shackles of family-run Bombay Oils Industries Ltd, Harsh Mariwala founded Marico in 1987. Today, the homegrown Marico is a leading international FMCG giant which recorded an annual turnover of over Rs 8000 crore last year. Their products, like Parachute, Nihar Naturals, Saffola, Set Wet, Livon and Mediker, are market leaders in their categories. This is the story of grit, gumption and growth, and of the core values of trust, transparency and innovation which have brought the company to its current stature. Co-authored by leading management thinker and guru Ram Charan, Harsh Realities is a much-awaited business book by an innovative and clear-headed leader who built a highly professional, competitive business from the ground up.

Every contact of each employee with a customer is an opportunity for revenue growth. That includes everyone from the people working in a company's call center handling customer inquiries and complaints to the CEO. In this book, Charan provides the building blocks and tools that can put a business on the path to sustained profitable growth. For more than twenty-five years, Charan has been working with companies around the world. The ideas he has developed for solving the profitable revenue growth dilemma facing many businesses are based on personally seeing what works in real time. These are ideas that have been tested across industries and that deliver results and they can be put to use immediately.

In this ground-breaking new book, Ram Charan, co-author of the bestselling Execution, redefines leadership by focusing on eight specific practical skills that, if mastered, are guaranteed to bring success.

1. Positioning --- ---formulating a clear central idea that chimes with your customers' desires and allows the business to be profitable.
2. Detecting patterns - recognising key variables that may create barriers to growth.
3. Managing the social system - influencing the workplace environment so that people can pull together and make the right decisions at the right time.
4. Selecting (and deselecting) people - spotting talent, and making the change when the fit isn't right.
5. Leading your management team - trusting, and inspiring, an effective team of managers.
6. Setting goals - deciding what the business can achieve.
7. Setting priorities - assessing the actions that need to be taken in order to meet your goals.
8. Dealing with external parties - making sure that outside power groups beyond your control do not affect your business unduly.

Unleash one of your company's greatest competitive weapons.

Ram Charan is a wise counselor and keen observer on the front lines of the American board revolution. Boards At Work is a rare blAnd of candid stories of casualties, of victories, and of sound ideas for change illustrated with real-world examples of how to adopt them.
--William Adams, director, Bell Atlantic and other boards

Unleash one of your company's greatest competitive weapons. In this timely new work, ace consultant Ram Charan takes an eye-opening look at how many boards are transcAnding tradition by becoming dynamic partners in corporate governance. He also shows CEOs how they can go about tapping the vast storehouse of experience and wisdom a board's membership represents. Filled with specific instructions and strategies, Fortune 500 examples, and real-time tools for initiating board transformations, Boards At Work takes readers to the front lines of the American board revolution.