I often hear that great management books are the ones whose ideas hold well even after decades of writing. This one was different as the ink had not even dried when I picked this book from a bookshop in Delhi. Probably, Ram Charan wrote this somewhere around end of December 2008 when the world was still watching the news of economic meltdown on their news channels. In some 130 odd pages, he has highlighted the need and ideas to learn, survive and prosper in the world we run our businesses today. Although the book has been written around examples and problems faced by some large companies, most of it holds well for businesses of any size and for people at all functional levels and responsibilities.
Many of us in the internet fraternity saw the Dot Com bubble and the Nasdaq melt down of 2001 and now we are witnessing the same for Wall Street in 2009. While in 2001, buzz word for websites like eyeballs changed to to revenue modal; the mad chase for growth in numbers from past few years is now changing to CASH.
The book covers the present scenario in an introductory chapter with examples from some large corporations and discusses how the leadership reacted to realign the business and resources. It brings forth the need to conserve cash; rethinking growth in terms of cash efficiency; bringing in a new intensity of management; controlling in real time and building a confident organisation. As an organisation goes about implementing their strategy in the changed economic scenario, the book has dedicated chapters on each functional area of a business. The next eight chapters have specific insights for the CEO, CFO, Sales & Marketing, Operations, R&D, the Supply Chain, HR & the Board of Directors.
Ram highlights how some organisations are working towards making themselves cash efficient. There is a shift of focus from income statements to the balance sheet. Unlike earlier when the success indicators were growing market share & increased earnings per share. Irrespective of the size of the company, there is a need to protect the cash flows. While talking about different functional areas, it covers the need for breaking strategy & operations to smaller individual units with the inevitable cutting in manpower across the various functions. The need for outsourcing some of the tasks while at the same time deploying some internal manpower to cut on outside suppliers. It shares the need for increased & faster communication within an organisation to keep the employees informed of the real scenario and keeping the motivation high. Most importantly, why and how the organisations still needs to invest in future projects and R&D efforts that will make all the difference as conditions get better.
It’s a book that addresses one of the most complex situations for our businesses in most simplest of ways. Only time will tell whether these ideas hold well over decades but reading the book is a good investment of your current time which is mired today in keeping pace with running businesses in today’s economic scenario.
