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1.Ram Charan’s biography

Ram Charan was born in a small indian town (1939) where he faced his first experience wtih business working in the family shoe shop. Afterowrds he got a degree by an Indian university in engineering and soon after began to work in Australia and then Hawai. Once his talent for business was discovered, he graduated with high distinction in Harvard Business School where he worked too.
Nowdays, mr Charan is one of the most famous business advisors and speakers among the senior business world with more of 35 years of experience. Up to now he has work with top most succesful companies as GE, Bank of America,KLM, Verizon… also Charan has served on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Corporate Governance and was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources
He is characterized by providing useful advices that have to do with the real-world complexities of business. His interactive and energetic way of teaching has won several awards as “the Bell Ringer”. Then it is easy to understand why he has sold more than 2 million copies of his books (eg: What the CEO Wants You to Know).

2.leadership in the era of economic uncertainty.
In this text it is explained how to survive the economic crisis, and Charam do it trough an example of DuPont CEO Chad Holliday. Chad faced the crisis by first time when he traveled to Japan and a Japanese CEO worried him about their cash position. So once he came back he thought since the begining that he should talk with his staff. Then he realized that bookings in Wellington’s hotels( “law city”) had plunged by 30% because people have postponed or stopped their legal fees; and automobile companies for which his company works didn’t sent him their production schedule. DuPont that is always on the forefront of contigency planning had aplan called the “Corporate Crisis”.
The plan, as always a crisis is declared, brought together 19 teams that worked during 4 days course and they concluded assuming that all the “troops” should know what was going on. So Holliday decided to comunicate how crisis was affecting the company in a easy and nontechnical way and his best tools were his chief economist and head pension fund. Within few days every employee had a face-toface interview with a manager, who explained him the crisis and asked the employee what he could do to mantain cash and reduces costs. At the begining it seemed to be employees understood it and some cost as travels dissapeard, but Holliday felt that they haven’t respond at all.
Then with his CEO and CFO spend hour and half with top 14 managers and his conclusion was that measures would be implemented too late, and they needed now. So the fastes way to save cash was to cut back over 20 000 contractors outside the company. This decission was taken in 6 weeks, and Hollidays predict even if these come back to normality inflationary times will lead to take new measures.
In conclusion he is a model of leader. He stared at the problem and spent less time possbile to look after solutions during uncertainty times.

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