charan_8888

BIOGRAPHY

Ram Charan (born Ramcharan in 1939 in Uttar Pradesh, India) is a business consultant, speaker, and writer.
Charan worked in his family's shoe shop in northern India while growing up. He earned a degree in engineering from Banaras Hindu University and later studied at Harvard Business School, where he was awarded an MBA (1965) and a doctorate (1967). Before becoming a full-time consultant in 1978, he taught at the Harvard Business School, the Kellogg School of Management, and Boston University.
Charan has consulted for many well-known companies such as GE, KLM, and Bank of America. He is the author of various popular books on business, including Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: The New Rules for Getting the Right Things Done in Difficult Times, Boards That Deliver, What The CEO Wants You To Know, Boards At Work, Every Business Is A Growth Business (with Noel Tichy), Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business, Confronting Reality, Know How and Execution (with Larry Bossidy and Charles Burck), which was a best-seller.
Ram is a workaholic. He is not married and has no children. At age 67, he recently purchased his first apartment in Dallas, TX. Before this purchase, he did not have a home and spent every night in a hotel room or at an associate's residence. Regardless of his location, his assistants in Dallas send him new clothes via courier and he returns his dirty laundry to them.
Charan was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources in 2000 and named a Distinguished Fellow in 2005. He is also a director of Austin Industries.

SUMMARY

LEADERSHIP IN THE ERA OF ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY
DuPont CEO Chad Holliday realized that the economic crisis was spreading to the financial industry. When Holliday arrived at the United States, he called together the top leaders to talk about this.
How the CEO of DuPont reacted to the current economic crisis?
DuPont has created a plan, called the Corporate Crisis plan. If it is invoked ,DuPont’s managers appear to evaluate the cause of the crisis. This plan is not used too much.
The plan immediately brought together the members, and after the course of four days, they realized that the nature of the crisis was only financial. At the end, they determinate what was needed to ensure DuPont’s viability.
The company’s chief economist and the head of their pensions were called to explain the employees the crisis in nontechnical language and its effects. Ten days later, the manager told the company what to do and he carried out a survey to see wether the employees knew what they had to do. In general, employees seemed to have obtained it but the problem was that they were not doing it so quickly enough.
Holliday together with CEO y CFO, met with the company’s top leaders to see how to cope with the crisis and the only problem was the speed. It was necessary to reduce costs and the fastest way was to reduce as much as possible the contractor the company had hired.
DuPont initial reaction of the spread of the crisis lasted less than six weeks. And even when things returned to normal, they predicted that the inflationary trends will be reaffirmed, but DuPont will be prepared.
He accepted the change and he took important steps, so it is what leaders have to do now.

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