Ram Charan, Ph.D. could be with the C.E.O. and top officers of General Electric or Home Depot or DuPont or KLM or Thomson Corporation or any one of the numerous companies where he has consulted and taught over the past four decades

Who in the World is Ram Charan? In addition to executive consulting and management training, Ram has written six books and co-authored six others. Over two million copies have been sold worldwide, so far. This Musing is a review of his latest book entitled, “Know-How,” sub-titled “The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform From Those Who Don’t,” published in 2007 by Crown Business, a division of Random House.

I had the great privilege of meeting Ram early in his career. As I was developing a one week seminar for 1400 fellow upper managers of New York Telephone in the fall of 1971, Dr. Charan was brought in by the President of New York Tel to interview on videotape the twenty officers of the company to collect their views on the threats and opportunities facing us in the decade ahead. His interviewing technique was penetrating, to say the least. It soon became obvious that the company of over 100,000 employees had to shrink and peoples’ skills had to be sharpened significantly in the face of rapidly changing technology, new competitive pressures, regulatory changes, etc.

Ram continued to provide several days of consulting per year over my career and beyond. He regularly meets with Ivan Seidenberg, C.E.O. of Verizon. That continuous relationship with one company - thirty-six years – is typical of the esteem in which he is held by top people around the world. His time with G.E. exceeds twenty years.

Ram is an immensely practical person. He offers no grand theories. His approach is to ask questions – after his own full preparation – of key officers of a company. The questions and the numerous follow-on questions make these officers pull out answers from the depths of their experience that now indicate what must be done. Sometimes they are unable to really answer the questions because they and their organizations have not collected and fully analyzed all the pertinent information, data and facts they should have. I speak from personal experience.

As a young boy Ram worked in his family’s shoe shop in a small village in India. He understood early in life the know-hows of making a business work. As he says in his new book, “no cash in the till at the end of the day meant no food on the table that night. Constant vigilance about cash aligns your mind to know what customers buy, why they prefer to buy from you, and what to do when things don’t sell.”

I list the Eight Know-Hows below. Many of you may have as a first reaction, “I already know all that.” But in all candor, how many of us practice regularly and excellently all we think we know?

The book is peppered with very specific examples from companies around the world. I counted 93 organizations listed in the index. Ram writes from personal and direct knowledge

The Eight Know-Hows

1. Positioning and Repositioning: Finding a central ideal for the 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.

If you read this book, I urge you to examine your own level of performance in each of these eight know-hows and develop ways for self-improvement. And then have the teams of which you are a part do the same and then discuss the results. It may reveal significant gaps which might be improved by study, training and practice - or it may suggest urgency in hiring a few new people already having these skills.

The book is divided into nine chapters. In my opinion, one chapter, “In the Court of Public Opinion – Dealing with Societal Issues Beyond the Market,” is worth the price of the book alone.

You can visit Dr. Ram Charan at his website www.ram-charan.com.