Harvard Business Review Guides Ultimate Boxed Set (16 Books)

The Fundamental Laws of Business

by David Stauffer

Why was a publisher willing to pay General Electric chairman Jack Welch an eye-popping $7 million advance for a book about his career? According to Dallas-based management consultant Ram Charan, author of What the CEO Wants You to Know and several other books, the answer has a lot to do with Welch’s ability to distill complexities—to think and talk about his sprawling global conglomerate as if it were a simple street-corner shop. An understanding of a few financial measures coupled with an enterprise-wide perspective, Charan maintains, can help you get a grip on any company, regardless of its size or location. “When you come right down to it,” he says, “business is very simple. There are universal ...