Book Short – A Smattering of Good Ideas that further my Reboot path Ram Charan’s The Attacker’s Advantage was not his best work, but it was worth the read. It had a cohesive thesis and a smattering of good ideas in it, but it felt much more like the work of a management consultant than some of his better books like Know How (review, buy), Confronting Reality (review, buy), Execution (review, buy), What the CEO Wants You to Know ( buy), and my favorite of his that I refer people to all the time, The Leadership Pipeline (review, buy). Charan’s framework for success in a crazy world full of digital and other disruption is this: Perceptual acuity (I am still not 100%…
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Ram Charan
Book Short: Crazy Eights
Book Short: Crazy Eights In honor of Return Path being in the midst of its eighth year, I recently read a pair of books with 8 in the title (ok, I would have read them anyway, but that made for a convenient criterion when selecting out of my very large “to read” pile). Ram Charan’s latest, Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People People Who Perform From Those Who Don’t, was pretty good and classic Charan. Quick, easy to skim and still get the main points. The book lost a little credibility with me when Charan lionized Verizon (perhaps he uses a different carrier himself) and Bob Nardelli (the book was published before Nardelli’s high profile dismissal), but makes good…
Book Short: Required Reading
Book Short: Required Reading The Leadership Pipeline, by Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, and James Noel, should be required reading for any manager at any level in any organization, although it’s most critical for CEOs, heads of HR, and first-time managers. Just ask my Leaderhip Team at Return Path, all of whom just had to read the book and join in a discussion of it! The book is easy to read, and it’s a great hands-on playbook for dealing with what the authors call the six leadersihp passages: From Individual Contributor to Manager (shift from doing work to getting work done through others) From Manager to Manager of Managers (shift to pure management, think beyond the function) From Manager of Managers…
Book Short: Reality Doesn’t have to Bite
Book Short: Reality Doesn’t have to Bite I just read Confronting Reality (book; audio), the sequel to Execution, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. Except I didn’t read it, I listened to it on Mariquita’s iPod Shuffle over the course of two or three long runs in the past week. The book was good enough, but I also learned two valuable lessons. Lesson 1: Listening to audio books when running is difficult – it’s hard to focus enough, easy to lose one’s place, can’t refer back to anything or take notes. Lesson 2: If you sweat enough on your spouse’s Shuffle, you can end up owning a Shuffle of your own. Anyway, I was able to focus on the book…