What the CEO Wants You To Know

Ram Charan

"One of the books that was - that I just came upon about five years ago was a book - it's a short book - called What The CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan. One of the things that I do on a part-time basis is that I teach a business class for the University of San Francisco, and I've developed the curriculum for this.

Students absolutely love this book; I've had at least five students come up to me and say, "Hey, Dan, I've ordered this for my department." Because it talks about marketing concepts; it talks about finance; it talks about accounting; it talks about operations; it talks about human resource management. So really a broad breadth, so it could be an integral book to anything. So literally any top - any business topic would fit well. This would be a great pre-read.

I think one of the great things about the book is that it gets your attention very quickly in the first chapter. What should you know as an employee? How can you add value to your company? And it really carries through throughout the text.

There's only really one problem from the book from a pedagogical - again, from a teaching perspective - and that is the book is again a 30,000-foot view of the world and it doesn't get into details. Right, so if you really want to put - if you want to talk more in terms about how things really are and what analyses need to be done, you have to get into the weeds a little bit. This book stays out of the weeds. I would give What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan a five-star rating. It's perfect for what it's designed to do, provide a broad overview, a quick glimpse into what some"

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