What the CEO wants You to Know

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.

1. Business Acumen: The Universal Language of Business
   1. What Jack Welch and Street Vendors Share: The Essence of Business Thinking
   2. Every Business Is the Same Inside: Cutting Through to Cash, Margin, Velocity, Growth, and Customers
   3. Understanding Your Company’s Total Business: How the Pieces Come Together
2. Business Acumen in the Real World
   4. The World Has Complexity, Leaders Provide Clarity: Figuring Out Business Priorities
   5. Wealth Is More Than making Money: Seeing the Business Like an Investor
3. Getting Things Done
   6. Growing People Takes Courage: Making matches, Fixing Mismatches
   7. Making Groups Decisive: Designing Social Operating Mechanisms
   8. What to Do and How to Do It: A CEO with an Edge in Execution
4. Your Personal Agenda
   9. Your Part in the Big Picture: Rekindling the Spirit of the Lemonade Stand

A very well thought out introduction to some complex issues, you just have to ignore the hero worshipping he drowns in sometimes.