Confronting Reality

Doing What Matters to Get Things Right

By: Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan

Narrated by: Kevin Gray

Confronting Reality will change the way you think about and run your business. It is the first book that shows how to connect the big picture of the new era of business with the nitty-gritty of what to do about it. Through a completely new way to understand and use the business model as the primary tool for confronting reality—a breakthrough that will become the management innovation of this decade—you’ll know sooner rather than later whether your fundamental business premise is under assault, where your best opportunities lie, what you should change and what you should leave alone, and how to realistically plan the future of your business.

The fundamentals of how a business makes money are being rapidly and permanently altered by sweeping structural changes. With their extraordinary depth and breadth of experience, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan are the ideal guides for everyone—entrepreneur, mid-level manager, or CEO—about what is to be done so you can get things right in this challenging, radically changed world. They start by showing you how to understand the most fundamental element of any business: whether you can realistically make the money you hope to in the game you’re playing.

Bossidy and Charan show how to use the business model to develop a robust, reality-based process for thinking about the speci?cs of your business in a holistic way. They show how to tie together the financial targets you must meet, the external realities you face, and internal activities such as strategy development, operating tactics, and selection and development of people.

Through the lens of the business model, as well as the skillful use of initiatives and development of people with the right leadership characteristics, you’ll see how Robert Nardelli at Home Depot, Jim McNerney at 3M, Dick Harrington at the Thomson Corporation, Michael Wisbrun at KLM, Joseph Tucci at EMC, and John Chambers at Cisco confronted reality. Whether they faced crisis or opportunity, all made the right kinds of changes through a combination of business savvy (the art of understanding the fundamentals driving a business) and business model thinking.©2004 Larry Bossidy, LLC, and Ram Charan; (P)2004 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Clarity that redefines your vision

I was surprisingly pleased with this book. It was very clearly written with a clear set of examples of companies that did and didn't deal with reality.

My management team has now listened to the book and we are revising our company objectives as a result There were realities that we were not bringing to the surface that this book has shed light on. It has help solidified our management team, redefined how we set goals, and made our analysis of problems much clearer.

Well worth the time to read/listen to.

On Point

As a new manager with aspirations of upward mobility, I found this book to be both enlightening and encouraging. I am a realist at heart and this book points out the areas that I should be looking at to ensure my business succeeds over the long term. I think its a good read.

Changed my thinking

THis book changed the way I thought about my business. It is a little repetitive and you really need some visuals as it talks about a business process and plan and a schematic would have helped understanding and subsequent implementation. Otherwise was worth listenting to.

Bossidy and Charan do it again

This book gets right to it. Businesses often fail because they fail to look at reality, either because they do not use enough resources to determine their outside realities, or they cannot confront their internal realities, or both. When confronted, reality is a challenge that can be dealt with. With well organized thought and concise examples, this book is a must for the struggling company, leader, manager, or consultant.