Boss's Day Out

Remember the early days when you were learning Maths.How your teacher used to say “Students, Math is all about 4 to 5 operations.Substraction, Addition, Multiplication, Division, & the parentheses. All other stuffs are just derivation of all these”. Remember how simple life looked when you found out these basics & how enjoyable the subject became.

If someone tells you the same thing about business how will you feel???If someone tells you that profitable business is all about mastering some basic fundamentals,,, won’t you look at him with a bit of surprise??? Won’t you treat the person with little bit snare when he or she says all business follows the same principles whether it is the business of a street vendor or the business of a huge MNC like WAl Mart or GE. To be very honest I felt quite the same when I saw the cover page & reviews of the book “WHAT THE CEO WANTS YOU TO KNOW” authored by Ram Charan who has done his DBA & MBA from Harvard University. Anyway since it was recommended by personalMBA list, bought it for the sake of self satisfaction that I have one of the books of the list. On a cool Monday morning while coming to office in the bus thought of giving it a try & to be frank enough I was not disappointed either. Have you seen Maradona playing in World cup 1986??? A small creature if you compare the average football player with him, but see him dribbling the ball & tearing apart the opposition’s defense & it is unbelievable how power packed his play is. They say small is beautiful & after reading this book I would wholeheartedly support that view. Just 135 pages of book can be so educative I didn’t know it earlier. Read it & you feel as if the intricacies of the business world are being cleared & you have a clear picture of how a business is run.


Starting from chapter 1 where the author gives you the fundamentals of every business which are 1- Cash Generation 2- Margin 3-Velocity 4- Return On assets 5- Growth 6- Customer, till the end where the author tries to put some basic questions for you to ask whenever you look at an organization or an industry as a whole, the book is thoroughly educative. To add to the readers’ delight the author has put some small cases in point like Wal Mart’s Sam Walton using these fundamentals. Michel Dell of Dell, Jack Welch of GE & some other high profile ceos also find mention in the list of high performing businessmen, who have honed the skill of mastering these basic fundamentals. Small comparisons here & there of the successful companies with the companies those could not succeed, helps to clear the intricate web of running a business for a layman to some extent. Not to miss the point which author mentions which being “To be a profitable business every manager or CEO should try to involve each & everyone who is involved in the business”

The book looks to be a kind of pocket book for the entrepreneurs who just want to get a refresher course in 3 hrs. Or so. So even if the subjects are not dealt exhaustively that should not be taken as a drawback. Pick up this book. Read it & go through it again & again till you master the vocabularies of business like Growth, productivity, efficiency, core competency, Consumer & customer. Read it & you will get the business Acumen that is required to run an enterprise & to get started of your own.