Good Solid Common Sense Nicely Arranged

books:


	• 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 36 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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101 course

Author Ram Charan has developed a holistic approach to what executives and managers must do and be to become successful leaders. According to Charan, leadership is a messy phenomenon because there are a number of things that influence it. Therefore, he has identified the skills, personal traits, and emotions that are required by today's business leaders.

Here is a breakdown of the eight know-hows:

1. Positioning and Repositioning: Finding a central idea for business that meets customer demands and that makes money.
2. Pinpointing External Change: Detecting patterns in a complex world to put the business on the offensive.
3. Leading the Social System: Getting the right people together with the right behaviors and the right information to make better, faster decisions and achieve business results.
4. Judging People: Calibrating people based on their actions, decisions and behaviors, and matching them to the non-negotiables of the job.
5. Molding a Team: Getting highly competent, high ego leaders to coordinate seamlessly.
6. Setting Goals: Determining the set of goals that balances what the business can become with what it can realistically achieve.
7. Setting Laser-Sharp Priorities: Defining the path and aligning resources, actions and energy to accomplish the goals.
8. Dealing With Forces Beyond the Market: Anticipating and responding to societal pressures you don't control but that can affect your business.

Command of the eight know-hows, according to the author, enables you to diagnose any situation and take appropriate action, lifting you out of your comfort zone of expertise by developing skills that prepare you to do what the situation requires, not just what you've traditionally been good at. The know-hows do not, however, stand alone. There are a million things that can block human beings from making sound judgments and taking effective action. That's where personal traits, psychology and emotions enter the leadership picture. Furthermore, the eight know-hows are especially influenced by a handful of personal traits that can affect leadership: ambition, drive and tenacity, self-confidence, psychological openness, realism and an insatiable appetite for learning.

I found this book too basic and common-sense. Is it because I have read so many business management books in the last year that I have come to expect more? Take for example the following statements:

"The true test of your positioning is the real world. If people like what you have to offer and you can sell it at a profit, you'll make money. If they're confused about what your business provides or they don't like it, you won't." (Is this too basic or just me?)

"The frequency, depth and abruptness of change in the world today means that you will be frequently shaping and reshaping your business so that it fits with the ever-changing landscape in a way that delivers your moneymaking aspirations." (Is it all about making money? Many management gurus will disagree with this last remark.)

"Selecting the right set of goals is the ultimate juggling act. The goals have to be of the right type and magnitude to be both achievable and motivational." (Again, too basic or just me?)

I personally found the book too basic for a manager at the helm of a big company. I think this book will appeal more to students in a 101 course on management and leadership. The stories of CEOs who turned large companies around make excellent case studies in a classroom environment.

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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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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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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