Confronting Reality (book review)

Book Review: Confronting Reality by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

This book proposes a business model that focuses on the need to understand the realities facing your company before you can actually execute a strategic plan that makes sense. (The authors have another bestseller titled: Execution)

I liked the examples they presented of companies that were either successful or not, in interpreting the realities they were facing.

I relate this to New Media because part of what I'm trying to figure out is, what are the realities that we face?

I was very interested to see in an interview with the two authors they referred to Peter Drucker's "The Practice of Management". I found parallels between Drucker's business model related to confronting reality and the author's model found in this book. (more on this in an upcoming post...)

The authors define a three-part business model composed of external environment, internal operations and financial targets. This model guides an organization to ask itself these three basic questions:

1) What's the nature of the game we're in?
2) Where is it going?
3) How do we make money in it?

Some quotes from the authors:

In order to execute, you have to have a clear perception of reality. Maybe that sounds obvious, but it's painfully clear that a lot of leaders don't. --Bossidy and Charan

You can't take anything for granted, especially success and time-proven solutions. You can't rest on your laurels; you have to be skeptical enough to accept that what lies ahead may be very different from what you're used to. --Ram Charan