Quotes from Ram Charan

I am so lazy and sometimes will go as late as 9 A.M. to shoot.

I love shopping, but I can't go out. I love going to restaurants and eating out with friends.

My family never had a business background. We are artistes.

I feel a man, when married, becomes more balanced. All the extra-curricular activities are done away with. The focus is on work and family.

What better way to foray into production than with 'Khaidi No 150.' The film is truly close to my heart because it is my father's 150th film.

Had 'Dhruva' not succeeded, I don't mind calling these films experimental.

I don't run after successful directors. I give importance to the content of the film.

I am open to them. If I come across something interesting, and I think it suits me, I may do a horror movie.

Only one competency lasts. It is the ability to create a steady, self-renewing stream of leaders. Money is just a commodity. Talent supplies the edge.

Imagine an inverted U-curve: as data initially becomes more available, decision accuracy improves; but beyond an inflection point of increasing information, the amount of data diminishes management's capacity to process the information and thus its ability to reach optimal decisions.20

Think of the G3 as the central brain trust of a talent-first organization. (You might want to keep the general counsel or chief risk officer close on big decisions if that suits your business, but it's the ongoing CEO-CFO-CHRO linkage that's crucial.) Effectively deployed, the G3 is the mechanism that will create the future of your organization. It can be the multiplier of your capacity, time, and capability, as illustrated in the following example.

Going on the offense is no longer optional, for one simple reason: defense alone means a shrinking business.

It takes a deep personal commitment to devote the time and energy to ensure that you have the very best person in each of the jobs you oversee. You may want help from HR or recruiting firms, but this is your personal responsibility. The better you are at it, the more you expand your own capacity and capability.

The three processes—people, strategy, and operations— remain the building blocks and heart of good execution.

How you meet your own commitments is important. Are you doing it by draining energy—driving people relentlessly, or burning them out by making impossible demands? Or are you expanding the capacity of the organization by helping people grow and expand their own capacities? In other words, there's a right and a wrong way to delegate.

Leaders who are disciplined, determined, consistent, and persistent in developing these know-hows tend to be successful on a sustained basis. In that sense, leaders are made.

Investing a half hour a day in reading, seven days a week, 365 days a year, is a habit that will bring more value to you and your leadership strength than any other investment of your time. It doesn't have to be books, and if it is, don't brag about how many you've read. Just search for the new ideas, new insights, and new pieces of information.

No matter how successful it has made you, your past experience won't ensure success in this new world.

a handful of decisions that only the board can make: the decisions to select, retain, or dismiss the chief executive; to establish a climate of ethics and integrity; to set the goals and incentives for the executive team; and to pinpoint the company's central idea, risk appetite, and capital structure.

Recent research suggests that "quality of management" is becoming an increasingly important factor in investor decisions. This may be because investors believe that a company that has a strong and predictable leadership pipeline is more likely to be able to generate sustained earnings growth. For this reason, a company's "leadership brand" can be a very valuable asset in today's investment community.

is the advancement of the mathematical tools called algorithms and their related sophisticated software. Never before has so much mental power been computerized and made available to so many—power to deconstruct and predict patterns and changes

When we asked Woolard about the most important lessons from his Apple experience, he reported that a board leader has to have regular access to the chief financial officer, deeply understand the company strategy and execution—and pick and partner with the right CEO.

These factors point to one of the fundamentals of leadership: the greater the scope of a decision and the more variables and uncertainties there are, the more important it is for the leader to be aware of unconscious drives and biases that could affect emotions, reason, and intuition.

Q. What is the difference between coaching and mentoring? A. Coaching generally has to do with success in the current position, with some emphasis—say, 10 to 15 percent—on the next position. Mentoring is the reverse. Most of the emphasis is on the future, probably 80 to 85 percent; only 15 to 20 percent is focused on current performance.