March 26, 2007
Book Short: Crazy Eights
Book Short: Crazy Eights In honor of Return Path being in the midst of its eighth year, I recently read a pair of books with 8 in the title (ok, I would have read them anyway, but that made for a convenient criterion when selecting out of my very large “to read” pile). Ram Charan’s latest, Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People People Who Perform From Those Who Don’t, was pretty good and classic Charan. Quick, easy to skim and still get the main points. The book lost a little credibility with me when Charan lionized Verizon (perhaps he uses a different carrier himself) and Bob Nardelli (the book was published before Nardelli’s high profile dismissal), but makes good points nonetheless. Some of the 8 Skills he talks about are what you’d expect on the soft side of leadership — building the team, understanding the social system, judging people — but his best examples were particularly actionable around positioning, goal setting, and setting priorities. The book reminded me much more of Execution and much less of Confronting Reality (which is a good thing). For years I’ve felt like the last person around to still not have read The 7 […]