Most Popular Books by Ram Charan

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than two million copies in print! The premier resource for how to deliver results in an uncertain world, whether you’re running an entire company or in your first management job. “A must-read for anyone who cares about business.”—The New York Times When Execution was first published, it changed the way we did our jobs by focusing on the critical importance of “the discipline of execution”: the ability to make the final leap to success by actually getting things done. Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan now reframe their empowering message for a world in which the old rules have been shattered, radical change is becoming routine, and the ability to execute is more important than ever. Now and for the foreseeable future: • Growth will be slower. But the company that executes well will have the confidence, speed, and resources to move fast as new opportunities emerge. • Competition will be fiercer, with companies searching for any possible advantage in every area from products and technologies to location and management. • Governments will take on new roles in their national economies, some as partners to business, others imposing constraints. Companies that execute well will be more attractive to government entities as partners and suppliers and better prepared to adapt to a new wave of regulation. • Risk management will become a top priority for every leader. Execution gives you an edge in detecting new internal and external threats and in weathering crises that can never be fully predicted. Execution shows how to link together people, strategy, and operations, the three core processes of every business. Leading these processes is the real job of running a business, not formulating a “vision” and leaving the work of carrying it out to others. Bossidy and Charan show the importance of being deeply and passionately engaged in an organization and why robust dialogues about people, strategy, and operations result in a business based on intellectual honesty and realism. With paradigmatic case histories from the real world—including examples like the diverging paths taken by Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase and Charles Prince at Citigroup—Execution provides the realistic and hard-nosed approach to business success that could come only from authors as accomplished and insightful as Bossidy and Charan.

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 governanceâ??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 judgmentsâ??and explains clearly and succinctly how boards can solve those problems. These battle-tested solutions help boards achieve what rules and regulations alone cannotâ??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.

A powerful lesson in what is really important in business, this remarkable book by an ultimate insider takes the lessons of the peddler and reveals how they can be used by the rest of us. Reminiscent of bestsellers such as "Who Moved My Cheese?" and" The One-Minute Manager, What the CEO Wants You to Know" is simple, direct, and of immense use to everyone in business.

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.

An updated and revised version of the bestselling The Leadership Pipeline – the critical resource for how companies can grow leaders from the inside. In business, leadership at every level is a requisite for company survival. Yet the leadership pipeline –the internal strategy to grow leaders – in many companies is dry or nonexistent. Drawing on their experiences at many Fortune 500 companies, the authors show how organizations can develop leadership at every level by identifying future leaders, assessing their corporate confidence, planning their development, and measuring their results. New to this edition is 65 pages of new material to update the model, share new stories and add new advice based on the ten more years of experience. The authors have also added a "Frequently Asked Questions" section to the end of each chapter.

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.

What''s the number one item on every company''s agenda? Profitable Growth. Every Business Is a Growth Business is your one-stop guide to making profitable growth happen. It''s a radical and refreshing source of ideas, inspiration, and common sense, all based on the unparalleled experience and access of Ram Charan and Noel Tichy. Charan and Tichy have worked with some of the world''s leading executives--people such as Jack Welch of GE, Eckhard Pfeiffer of Compaq, Larry Bossidy of Allied Signal, John Reed of Citigroup, Dick Brown of Cable & Wireless, Alex Trotman and Jacques Nasser of Ford, and the senior management of Coca-Cola--who have transformed their companies into profitable growth machines. Every Business Is a Growth Business is a distillation of what the authors and these unique leaders have learned about profitable growth: If your business isn''t growing sustainably and profitably, it''s dying. Any business can grow profitably. There is no such thing as a mature business. A company grows because growth is in the corporate mindset, created by the company''s leaders. The mindset of growth starts at the top, but it must reach all the way to the bottom. Sustainable growth is profitable and capital-efficient. "Broadening your pond," changing your company''s genetic code, developing a growth strategy from the outside in, and other unique ideas. Every Business Is a Growth Business includes inside accounts of how GE Medical, Allied Signal, Compaq, Citibank, Reynolds and Reynolds, Praxair, and GE Capital developed profitable growth strategies. It includes "The Handbook for Growth," a highly practical guide that will be an immense help as you and your team develop your company''s profitable growth strategy.

From the bestselling author of What the CEO Wants You to Know? How to rethink sales from the outside in We have to face the truth: the process of selling is broken. Customers have more choices and are under intense pressure. Yet few companies are facing this reality. When they don''t, a lingering malaise sets in. More than ever these days, the sales process tends to be a war about price-a frustrating, unpleasant war that takes all the fun out of selling. But there''s a better way to think about sales, says bestselling author Ram Charan, who is famous for clarifying and simplifying difficult business problems. What the customer wants you to know is how his or her business works, so you can help make it work better. It sounds simple, but there''s a catch: you won''t be able to do that with your traditional sales approach. Instead of starting with your product or service, start with your customer''s problems. Focus on becoming your customer''s trusted partner, someone he can turn to for creative, cost-effective solutions that are based on your deep knowledge of his values, goals, problems, and customers. This book defines a new approach to selling which Charan calls value creation selling-that while radical is nonetheless practical. VCS has been battle-tested in companies in a variety of industries, such as Unifi, Mead-Westvaco, and Thomson Financial. It will enable you to: • Gain a deeper knowledge of your customer''s problems • Understand how your customer''s company really makes decisions • Help your customer improve margins and drive revenue growth • Connect sales with other key functions such as finance and manufacturing • Come up with new customized offerings • Make price much less of an issue VCS gets you out of the hell of commoditization and low prices. It differentiates you from the competition, paving the way to better pricing, better margins, and higher revenue growth, built on win-win relationships that deepen over time. Someday, every company will listen more closely to the customer, and every manager will realize that sales is everyone?s business, not just the sales department?s. In the meantime, this eye-opening book will show you how to get started.

YOUR WORLD AS A DIRECTOR HAS SUDDENLY CHANGED. YOU’VE SEEN MEMBERS OF OTHER boards take the heat when their companies imploded. The managements of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Washington Mutual clearly failed, but so did their boards. Now the board of every company beset with problems is coming under scrutiny. The pressure is on. Your board must own up to its accountability for the performance of the corporation. Governance now means leadership. Boards must change their modus operandi to address the new and complex issues that are emerging. These include ENSURING LIQUIDITY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS SETTING CEO PERFORMANCE TARGETS IN A VERY UNCERTAIN ECONOMY ASSESSING STRATEGY AND ENTERPRISE RISK UNDER EXTREME VOLATILITY So what should boards do now? What should they be talking about in their meetings and executive sessions? What decisions must they make? How assertive must they be regarding company priorities and operating goals? In Owning Up, business advisor and corporate governance expert Ram Charan answers these and other burning questions on the minds of directors and business leaders. He describes best practices that are emerging in boardrooms he has observed firsthand. And he provides practical recommendations on a range of issues, from compensation to dealing with external constituencies. Wisely attuned to the human side, he confronts the need for some boards to refresh their composition and for others to rebalance their board dynamics. Directors, CEOs, general counsels, and operating executives will find here the guidance they need to meet the new and rising standards for corporate governance in this demanding business environment.

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.

Two superstars of the business world use their insider knowledge at a wide range of companies to provide a system any business can use to build its most valuable asset: talented leaders who can deliver the goods.

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.

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 businessKnow-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.

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.

*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.

“There is no better person than Ram Charan to provide advice on managing in a downturn.” –Larry Bossidy, former Chairman & CEO Honeywell International Inc. "This is all classic guru writing, stressing the extremity of the situation. But from Charan - who has already brought us bestsellers such as Execution and What the CEO Wants You to Know - it seems plausible. His forte is bold advice, delivered with convincing rhetoric. And he has completed his new text just at the right time." --Financial Times As a business leader today, you face an unprecedented challenge: the worldwide economic downturn. Cash and credit are dwindling, sales forecasts are dismal, and morale is sinking. This is not a time to reflect. It is a time to act, decide, and energize your people—with urgency. This is your moment. Are you up to the task? In Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty, Ram Charan helps you steer your business through the minefield of contracting markets, cash shortages, and ongoing uncertainty. No matter what your leadership role, Charan’s insight will help ensure that your business emerges leaner, stronger, and well in front of the competition. “We will not know when we have turned the corner, and we cannot envision the shape and scope of the world that will emerge,” Charan writes. “What we can be sure of is that this is a time of tumultuous change, and with change come both danger and opportunity.” In this concise and highly accessible guide, the author provides practical actions you can execute immediately to Protect cash flow vigilantly, even daily, and use cash more efficiently Use ground intelligence to survive the storm and position your business to thrive in the aftermath Develop a better understanding of your customers Reevaluate your pricing strategy and capital expenditures Use cost cutting strategically Using examples and case studies, Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty illustrates how leaders at DuPont, Hanesbrands, Wipro, and other companies used Charan’s techniques to get results. The chaos of global economic meltdown has imposed an urgency you have never before experienced. It’s a scary thing, but it can also be exciting—if you’re prepared.

How HR can lead. If you read nothing else on reinventing human resources, read these 10 articles. We''ve combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones on how HR leaders can partner with the C-suite, drive change throughout the organization, and develop the workforce of the future. This book will inspire you to: Overhaul performance management practices to jump-start motivation and engagement Use agile processes to transform how you hire, develop, and manage people Establish diversity programs that increase innovation and competitiveness as well as inclusion Use people analytics to bring unprecedented insight to hiring and talent management Prepare your company for the double waves of artificial intelligence and an older workforce Close the gap between HR and strategy This collection of articles includes: "People Before Strategy: A New Role for the CHRO," by Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, and Dennis Carey; "How Netflix Reinvented HR," by Patty McCord; "HR Goes Agile," by Peter Cappelli and Anna Tavis; "Reinventing Performance Management," by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall; "Better People Analytics," by Paul Leonardi and Noshir Contractor; "21st-Century Talent Spotting," by Claudio Fernandez-Araoz; "Tours of Duty: The New Employer-Employee Contract," by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh; "Creating the Best Workplace on Earth," by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones; "Why Diversity Programs Fail," by Frank Dobbins and Alexandra Kalev; "When No One Retires," by Paul Irving; and "Collaborative Intelligence: Humans and AI Are Joining Forces," by H. James Wilson and Paul R. Daugherty.

Lafley, the CEO of Procter & Gamble, and Charan, the bestselling author of "Know-How," show how to change the game of business by making innovation the centerpiece, driving everything from strategy and budgeting to employee selection, promotion, and reward.