
33
The Fundamental
Laws of Business
by David Stauff er
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 com-
plexities—to think and talk about his sprawling global
conglomerate as if it were a simple street-corner shop.
An understanding of a few fi nancial measures coupled
with an enterprise-wide perspective, Charan maintains,
can help you get a grip on any company, regardless of its ...