Good Solid Common Sense Nicely Arranged | Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from...

As usual solid advice from Ram Charan | Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't | Ram Charan

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	• Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't Ram Charan Crown Business, 2007 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 37 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Bo Knows Football - Ram Knows Know-How!

Management uber-guru Ram Charan offers a business counterpart to Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" in his book, "Know How." This is an engaging and insightful discussion of eight key skills that comprise business acumen and know how.

"Know How" will be most useful for business executives, especially C-level execs. Nevertheless, those in middle management or those who aspire to a management position cannot help but benefit from the book.

At times, it is tempting to see Charan's recitation as a list of Boy Scout virtues. At other times, it is not easy to discern just how practitioners are to acquire such qualities. Despite his guru and quasi-celeb status, Charan writes in a lucid style that is (relatively) jargon-free.

Reading and heeding "Know How" will turbo-charge your business skill sets.

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Good Solid Common Sense Nicely Arranged

This book by Ram Charan has all the hallmarks of a smart business book -- a truly rare thing. I would reccomend it simply because it puts a lot of common sense ideas in print for managers and would be managers to see. In a world where true thirst for knowledge is lacking -- few managers read history, science, or social theory or even good classical literature -- this book is a good shorthand reminder to managers that they need to exhibit the tenets of wisdom even if they do not necessarily possess them.

Therefore the essential points -- basical arbitrary but nonetheless germane -- are as follows.

1. Positioning and Repositioning. Keep asking questions -- ignorance is your friend -- not your enemy -- keep leaning and asking questions.
2. Pinpointing External Change. Do not be static... regard change as part of business
3. Leading the Social System. Viewing your company as an organic part of society and treating it in similar fashion. Business is different -- but it ain't that different. You need combine human traits with business acuman -- the two are not mutually exclusive and people who treat them as such set themselves up for a downfall.
4. Judging People. Match people with positions.
5. Molding a Team. Bringing together good teams and making allowances for their idiosyncracies and not pounding them into theory.
6. Setting Goals. Basically being realistic -- forget about Wallstreet.
7. Setting Priorities. Again realistically .
8. Dealing with Forces beyond the Market. A particularly notable section on dealing with social forces such as human rights and environmental movements and how they impact upon decision making -- the lesson -- never ever ignore them.

There is the regular stories in this book - a late night drink under a starry sky with a recalcitrant manager, a moment of clarity with a person who realises their true worth in a company that values them as an individual and does not try to pound them into a corporate mold. It's there... some intercultural allusions as well.

Of course the common sense attributes of tenacity, and ambition and self-confidence are the defining attributes, but Charan does not succumb to the idea that management is infallible -- in fact Charan propounds an organic philosophy of doubt as the road to enlightenment and also good management practises. But you need to be open, realistic and have a real idea to learn everything posssible and this in Charan's way of thinking encompasses a notion of the broad liberal arts individual with open-mindedness and a passion for life outside the boardroom.

There is not much revolutionary here, but the thoughts are clearly outlined and serve as a nice antidote to notions of corporate excess, greed and the know-nothingness exhibited far too often by business people big and small.

Good work!

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As usual solid advice from Ram Charan

Ram Charan has once again showed that doing business is a lot about hard work and less about lofty speeches and buzz words. He teaches the middle manager to think about thier job in the context of the industry they work in. He advises senior managers to have the courage to get into the messy details and make sense of them when defining strategy, laying out execution plans and hiring and firing people. Most business books have a problem - the central idea is exhausted in the first few pages and the author just keeps saying the same things in different ways. Ram Charan's books are very different. Every point is well thought out and is explained vividly. Each chapter adds to the know-how. I wish there was a forum to have a Q&A with him about the points he makes in his books.

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One tip makes this book worth reading

Don't dismiss this entry in Charan's business guru tips because most of it is basic, commonsense. My rule for business reading is that if you get one good guideline that's relevant and reliable, the book is worth whatever you paid for it. The "8 skills" that Charan says separates executive winners and losers popped up a valuable, worth-the-price principle for me: A company exec can't let the company go into an internal holding pattern waiting for clear, definite external patterns. If you need an example, think of the companies that lose out when executives waffle or stay on the sidelines while politicians take charge of the external patterns. Climate change legislation is a case in point. Executives of GE, Wal-Mart, Duke Energy, GM, DuPont and others got into the sociopolitical process to shape the rules that companies must live by as the war on carbon unfolds. Charan correctly observes that "the fruits...will belong to the realists" who see the key variables and act to shape their impact.

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The new grand theory of leadership by Ram Charan . . . The breakthrough book that links know-how?the skills of people who know what they are doing? with the personal and psychological traits of the successful leader.

How often have you heard someone with a commanding presence deliver a bold vision that turned out to be nothing more than rhetoric and hot air? All too often we mistake the appearance of leadership for the real deal. Without a doubt, intelligence, vision, and the ability to communicate are important. But something big is missing: the know-how of running a business?the capacity to take it in the right direction, do the right things, make the right decisions, deliver results, and leave the people and the business better off than they were before.

For well over four decades, Ram Charan has been learning in the most visceral way the underlying reasons why leaders succeed and fail. As one of the most influential advisers to top management teams of leading companies around the world, he has had a front-row seat to observe the cause and effect of leadership practices and behaviors.

Ram Charan?s insight into the real content of leadership provides you with the eight fundamental skills needed for success in the twenty-first century:

? Positioning (and, when necessary, repositioning) your business by zeroing in on the central idea that meets customer needs and makes money
? Connecting the dots by pinpointing patterns of external change ahead of others
? Shaping the way people work together by leading the social system of your business
? Judging people by getting to the truth of a person
? Molding high-energy, high-powered, high-ego people into a working team of leaders in which they equal more than the sum of their parts
? Knowing the destination where you want to take your business by developing goals that balance what the business can become with what it can realistically achieve
? Setting laser-sharp priorities that become the road map for meeting your goals
? Dealing creatively and positively with societal pressures that go beyond the economic value creation activities of your business

Know-How is the missing link of leadership. By showing how the eight know-hows link to, interact with, and reinforce personal and psychological traits, Ram Charan provides a holistic and innovative portrait of successful leaders of the twenty-first century.

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