Many business books are written with the goal of intimidating or impressing the reader. This serves to inflate the ego of the super-business all-star who wrote it. You’ve read the same blah blah blah that I have. It usually sounds like this, “If you vector your potentialities in a mutually convergent synergy, you increase the scalability of your operationality.” What in the heck does that even mean? I’m usually bored out of my mind about a third of the way through a book like that. I drive myself through the next third of that kind of book only to close the book up before I finish. Ram Charan is NOT one of those writers. He takes examples that a third grader can understand (his family’s fruit stand in India) to illustrate how a business works. Maybe we should teach all courses at the level that a third grader would understand. My favorite idea: Your goal as a business owner is to be small, fat and happy. If you make your business as small as possible (while producing your good or service), you will be as fat as possible (making the most profit) and that is what will make you happy. Global domination usually creates more headaches than profit. Oh, and you’ll find out why Wal-Mart puts the toilet paper way in the back.
Quibble: He thinks it is a good idea for Wal-Mart to put the toilet paper all the way in the back.