Every Business Is a Growth Business: How Your Company Can Prosper Year After Year [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Ram Charan (Author), Noel M. Tichy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 1998

What's the number one item on every company's agenda?

Profitable Growth.

Every Business Is a Growth Business is your one-stop guide to making profitable growth happen. It's a radical and refreshing source of ideas, inspiration, and common sense, all based on the unparalleled experience and access of Ram Charan and Noel Tichy.  

Charan and Tichy have worked with some of the world's leading executives--people such as Jack Welch of GE, Eckhard Pfeiffer of Compaq, Larry Bossidy of Allied Signal, John Reed of Citigroup, Dick Brown of Cable & Wireless, Alex Trotman and Jacques Nasser of Ford, and the senior management of Coca-Cola--who have transformed their companies into profitable growth machines. Every Business Is a Growth Business is a distillation of what the authors and these unique leaders have learned about profitable growth:


If your business isn't growing sustainably and profitably, it's dying.
Any business can grow profitably. There is no such thing as a mature business.
A company grows because growth is in the corporate mindset, created by the company's leaders.
The mindset of growth starts at the top, but it must reach all the way to the bottom.
Sustainable growth is profitable and capital-efficient.
"Broadening your pond," changing your company's genetic code, developing a growth strategy from the outside in, and other unique ideas.


Every Business Is a Growth Business includes inside accounts of how GE Medical, Allied Signal, Compaq, Citibank, Reynolds and Reynolds, Praxair, and GE Capital developed profitable growth strategies. It includes "The Handbook for Growth," a highly practical guide that will be an immense help as you and your team develop your company's profitable growth strategy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"There's no such thing as a mature business," only a growth business, write leading business consultants Ram Charan and Noel M. Tichy. Every Business Is a Growth Business is a step-by-step manual for turning any company into an expanding company. The book is packed with real-world examples and key concepts for executives to get their businesses on an upward trajectory.

Charan and Tichy assert that growth requires sticking to two principles: "strategy from the outside in" and "changing the genetic code." The first means putting yourself in your customers' shoes and asking what are their needs and how are they changing. From this perspective, a company can redefine its market and come up with creative ways to expand demand. The second principle, changing the genetic code, means revamping the corporate culture so that a new mindset for growth can thrive. As anyone who has ever worked in a company knows, corporate culture is a hard thing to overhaul. The book gives concrete steps to make that happen; sometimes it requires whole new leadership.

Charan, who has been on the faculty of the Harvard Business School and Northwestern University, and Tichy, a professor at the University of Michigan Business School, speak from experience. They've advised companies such as Royal Dutch/Shell and Mercedes-Benz. One of their heroes is the late Roberto Goizueta of Coca-Cola. When Goizueta took over, the company was on cruise control. It dominated the U.S. soft- drink industry--a market that many experts believed was mature with nowhere to grow. Under conventional thinking, Coca-Cola was maxed out: it would do well just to defend each tenth of a percent of market share against archrival PepsiCo. But in the 1980s, Goizueta framed the question of market share in a different way. Goizueta got his top executives to see that globally, Coca-Cola accounted for less than 2 ounces of the 64 ounces of fluid that each of the world's 4.4 billion people drank on average every day. In one simple stroke, he redefined the market and opened vast new areas of opportunity for his company. Coca-Cola became an immensely successful growth company under his leadership. Similar stories about Compaq, Citibank, and other companies abound. Every Business Is a Growth Business is an inspiring and practical book for business leaders looking to grow their company. --Dan Ring

From Publishers Weekly

Consultants Charan and Tichy systematically destroy one of the last crutches that weak managers lean on. There is, they argue persuasively, no such thing as a mature business; intriguingly, the best managers?many of whom the authors interviewed here?never thought there was. Citing such classic cases as Coca-Cola, Tichy (Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will) and Charan (Boards at Work) point out that business's current fascination with "core competencies" is partly to blame for hindering growth. While there is something to be said for concentrating on what you do best, such a focus, they note, keeps companies looking inward at the very time they need to look outward to find opportunities for growth. For example, once Coke defined its competition as all beverages and not just soft drinks, its sales took off. The book is far longer than it needs to be, however, as the authors repeatedly cite multiple secondhand sources to make the same point instead of relying on their own interviews, and frequently quote their own previous work. An extensive "handbook" (the last of four parts) is perhaps the most useful section: it includes exercises showing readers how to apply the authors' ideas to their own businesses in a manner more lucid than most of the competition.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business; 1 edition (September 14, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812928792
• ISBN-13: 978-0812928792
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,813,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well-written, very practical recipe for growth and change., February 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Every Business Is a Growth Business: How Your Company Can Prosper Year After Year (Hardcover)

I found this book to be one of the best I have read on the topics of growth and change in some time. This book is devoid of the psychological "fluff" that permeates many other books in this genre. It reads like a practical recipe to be followed by those commited to growth and change. Not at all unlike Welch's annual letters to the shareholders of GE. Whereas the annual letters of others companies drone on and on about what was, surrounded by the fluff of what can be, Welch's letters read like a master plan for action, which can be understood and driven to all levels of the company.

The authors define "desirable" growth from the perspective of shareholders as capital efficient, profitable growth. They then describe a framework for "growing the pond you fish in". Next, they point out the necessity of changing the "genetic code" of the organization so that growth is pursued by leaders at all levels in the organization. They describe a framework for producing this change in the genetic code of the organization. This framework is primarily based on a "teachable point-of-view" developed by the leadership, and constantly reinforced and reiterated through various carefully designed "operating mechanisms". The teachable point-of-view consists of key business ideas, values, emotional energy, and "edge" (on tough calls).

I've read this book twice already, and may read it again. I've started to implement the methodology in my company...so far, so good.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Every Leader should read this...then read again!, April 11, 2002

By 

Bruce V. Culver - See all my reviews

This review is from: Every Business Is a Growth Business: How Your Company Can Prosper Year After Year (Paperback)

This is one of my favorite leadership books by two authors with whom I have a great deal of respect for their advice. The premise of the book it that by looking at the entire business landscape affecting your clients, there are larger opportunities in which to solve the client's CEO issues beyond the immediate customer orders. Written with real world examples, some of which were first hand consulting jobs by the authors, the examples are detailed and written so you can relate them to your own work.

I have applied these principles in my own professional work and find the concepts very useful in business growth development efforts. In almost every growth opportunity development session with employees, collegues and clients, the going in premise is that there is not enough budget or too limited a market, thus preventing us from pursuing a given opportunity. Applying the author's concepts to creating the expanded view of the opportunity almost always proves to incite a bigger picture for everyone.

The book may require better book bindings because I refer back to it so often that I will one day wear out the bindings!

Read and Expand the Pond! Highly Recommended.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read!, March 2, 2001

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Every Business Is a Growth Business: How Your Company Can Prosper Year After Year (Paperback)

Ram Charan and Noel M. Tichy make the case that no company, even a very large corporation, should think of itself as a mature company or as part of a mature industry. If you look at the market broadly and take your customer's perspective, you will always find room for growth. First, look at your customers' changing needs and think of how your company can expand beyond its current market. Then, expand that approach throughout the company. The basic message may sound familiar, but Charan and Tichy bring a strong how-to approach to their directions for implementing it in your company. We at getAbstract.com appreciate the utility of their mix of examples, graphs, charts, and workbook, which should prove helpful to executives and company owners.