What the CEO Wants You To Know

1

How This Book Can Help You

 

Think back to your school days and the best teacher you ever had. The one who seemed to know everything about his or her subject and had something all the other teachers lacked: the ability to boil down the complex ideas of the discipline--whether it was psychology, economics, mathematics, or chemistry--so that you really got it.

Other teachers may have had a great depth of knowledge, or fancier credentials, but they couldn t turn on the lightbulb over your head. Instead of making something complex seem simple, they did the opposite--they made it harder to understand.

I ve been in the business world for more than fifty years, beginning when I was a child in my family s small shoe store in India, then working as an engineer in Australia. From there, I moved to America, attended Harvard Business School, taught there and at Northwestern s Kellogg School of Management and Boston University, and have been advising CEOs and serving on boards of directors at companies large and small around the world ever since. The one thing I ve noticed in all that time is that the best CEOs are like the best teachers. They are able to take the complexity and mystery out of business by focusing on the moneymaking fundamentals. And they make sure that everyone in the company, not just their executive colleagues, understands those building blocks of business.

You could say that in doing so they have their self-interest at heart, since the company is more successful when everyone knows how the business works. But it s not just the CEO who benefits. People feel more connected to their work and have greater job satisfaction when they really understand how their organization works. And as the company grows profitably year after year there are greater opportunities for them to expand their careers and make more money, and the company can make a greater contribution to the community. The same applies to a

Ram Charan is the coauthor of the bestsellng Execution and Confronting Reality, written with Larry Bossidy, and the author of Know How and ten other books.  A former award winning Harvard Business School professor, he is a noted expert on business strategy, execution, corporate boards and building a high performance organization.  He has worked with the CEOs of some of the world s most successful companies, including GE, Bank of America, Verizon, Coca-Cola, 3M, Merck, Aditya Birla Group and Tata Group.