Customer Rating:
Summary: Play Where the Puck Is Going to Be
Comment: "Avoiding reality is a basic and ubiquitous human tendency," write Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. Leaders often tilt that way also and lack the discipline to confront reality. They comment, "Exercising the power of realism requires an open and inquisitive mind, intense curiosity, the intellectual ability to sort out complexity, the ability to persuade others, and--undergirding it all--the courage of inner strength. People who lack these qualities can't be considered leaders. They should look for other work." Yikes!

This is no quick-read novelette with three points and a poem. It's a thinking person's serious book with an innovative business model as the reward for your reading diligence. When programs, products and services all start to look alike (cell phones, music, churches, hamburgers, conferences, airlines, eNewsletters, etc.) the authors quote IBM's CEO with this warning, "Either you innovate or you're in commodity hell."

Why do leaders fail to confront reality and change? There are six habits of highly unrealistic leaders, suggest Bossidy and Charan: 1) Filtered information, 2) Selective hearing, 3) Wishful thinking, 4) Fear, 5) Emotional overinvestment and 6) Unrealistic expectations of capital markets.

How can you anticipate change before it's too late? The authors reference hockey great Wayne Gretsky's famous answer, "A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Strategic solutions for a familiar problem
Comment: Authors Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan start with what you know: the business world has dramatically, irrevocably changed. Companies confront the new reality of globalization, free capital flows and powerhouse retailers. The book's strength lies in its relentless insistence on a basic fact that business leaders know but have apparently been trying to deny: you must see the economic world as it really is. This is not new. You know the ground has shifted, but have you figured out everything that you need to do now? Most of today's business models describe how companies made money in the past - but survival now requires more than a model based on the old economy. You need that elusive, intuitive attribute Bossidy and Charan call "business savvy." Even if they can't quite seem to nail down a precise definition, their case studies illustrate how this super sense works, and why you need it. We recommend their book to managers and executives who want to learn how to rethink their businesses in today's environment.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Confronting Reality : Doing What Matters to Get Things Right
Comment: Clearly a reality check around the problems we all face as our customers and shareholders expectations are changing. In reviewing three major telecom institutions, Larry reminds us of the fundementals of we are in business. It's a good model for use when we're looking in the mirror at our own situation.

Definately worth the investment to read.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Look! A FOREST!!!
Comment: Instead of peicemealing a business to death: strategy, marketing, finance, etc. Bossidy and Charan give us a view of a whole business, from the chair of the savvy Entrepreneur or that of the CEO. They show hot to fit all the peices of a business together.

Bossidy and Charan use well-known examples and analyze the pitfalls and successes of these examples (Home Depot, Walmart, Thompson) according to a three-part business model: external environment, internal operations and financial targets. They also show you how to integrate by juggling the three simultaneously!

This was a great introductory book to orient businesspersons of any trade, level and experience to the whole shebang of business.

But. . .

Truthfully, i have read this 'business model' stuff before, with more depth and more analysis. I read the book "The Escher Cycle" by F. Jackson a couple of years back. That book goes into much more detail about most of Bossidy and Charan's three-part business model. Couple that book with "Value Migration" and you'll have a much better handle on the hurly-burly world of business.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Business Book!
Comment: Confronting Reality" is a gold-mine of perspective on how to get an organization properly focused - starting by confronting reality. It belongs on the bookshelf of every manager with bottom-line responsibility.

Bossidy begins by stating that any plan for a business has to answer three questions: 1)What's the nature of the game we're in? 2)Where is it going? 3)How do we make money in it? Incredibly, says Bossidy, in many organizations they rarely get asked, much less adequately answered.

Strategic plans of most companies don't work. A key reason is that little time, if any, is spent harmonizing the facts of the external environment, the financial targets that are set, and the internal capabilities of the business. People with a well-developed sense of business savvy seldom have a strategy ahead of time - instead, they devise their strategies as a means of meeting financial targets, not the other way around.

Buyers have much greater power today than in past years. Globalization + overcapacity (in many business lines) have shifted power to large buyers and intermediaries (Wal-Mart).

Questions that help detail the answers to the first three include: 1)Is the how of making money in my business and industry changing? 2)Who is winning in my industry, who is not, and why? 3)How, specifically, are the winners making money? 4)If my business is a winner, what do I need to do to stay on top? Conversely, if I need to change my game, what specifically should I be doing? 5)Am I in a growth industry or not? If not, and I want to continue, how do I change it or play it better than the competition? 6)Is my organization moving quickly to spot and take advantage of growth opportunities generated by these changes? 7)How do major customers see my products? 8)Am I bound by legacy costs (eg. pensions, healthcare) that make competing difficult?

Bossidy then identifies behaviors as common causes of failure to confront reality. (President Bush needs to read this section VERY CAREFULLY.) 1)Filtered Information: Possibly due to getting information only from those with the same point of view - typically in organizations looking at the world from the inside out rather than outside in. 2)Selective Hearing: The most common reasons are preconceived notions or the arrogance of past success. 3)Wishful Thinking: The merger will succeed because we need it to work (or have the best people on it). 4)Fear: Some tyrants fire people for disagreeing with them; more common is a situation where companies force-rank executives and use "attitude" as one of the criteria.

Summarizing - a well thought-out framework for realistic planning is provided by a highly credible former top executive.

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