Monday, June 14, 2010

Management Guru With A Different Take Towards Life– Ram Charan

image For the two years of my life in my MBA School, there were a lot of Management Gurus, Consultants, Authors, Harvard Professors, CEO’s and Presidents who we came accross. We read about them and praised them in unison. With few of our professors idolizing American names and their feats which drove companies on a breathtaking accelerated path of growth.

The only international guru of Indian origin that was talked about was Pankaj Ghemawat, that too during an International Business session by Prof Shareif. Never once was Ram Charan mentioned. Although being an avid reader of a lot of books, I was knowledgeable about him but did not read much about him till today. I wonder why is Ram Charan not included in the countable-on-my-fingers list. Reading about Ram Charan is like visualising a fast-track jet travelling through space.

So today I was spending my time relatively more productively at Crosswords, where I picked up his latest book called “What the Customer Wants You to Know”. Right from the first page, the book catches your interest. If you are into the business of selling (which generally everybody is, most of them at least), this book is a must read for you.

His previous books are

  • Owning Up: The 14 Questions Every Board Member Needs To Ask (2009)
  • The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation (2008)
  • Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't (2007)
  • Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis (2007)
  • Boards That Deliver: Advancing Corporate Governance From Compliance to Competitive Advantage (2005)
  • The Source of Success: Five Enduring Principles at the Heart of Real Leadership (2005)
  • Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Right (2004)
  • Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business: 10 Tools You Can Use Monday Morning (2004)
  • Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (2002)
  • What the CEO Wants You to Know : How Your Company Really Works (2001)
  • The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company (2000)
  • Every Business is a Growth Business: How Your Company Can Prosper Year After Year (2000)

He is called as the most influential consultant alive on earth by Fortune and some of the top CEO's in the world. Most interesting is he didnt have a home till recently, used to stay at hotels or stay back at Client’s home and his laundry was flown to and fro by FedEx.

Came across a very intriguing article on cnn website by Fortune's David Whitford, that talks about history of Mr. Ram ad his daily life. Recommend to read this article. Please read it till the end. Extremely interesting.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/30/8405482/index.htm

 

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