Name Dropping
Via Businesspundit, this unintentionally depressing story in Fast Company about Ram Charan, who I have never heard of but supposedly is "one of the world's most renowned management consultants".

I suppose you can't fault people for having different priorities, but this strikes me as sad:

Perhaps because he's unencumbered by kids' soccer games or a wife's birthdays, he is utterly reliable, and his equally busy clients respect him for that. A breakfast meeting on Sunday at 7 a.m. in Cleveland and a lunch in San Francisco? No problem. "He's very easy to get a hold of," says NDCHealth's Hoff. "I can call him anytime, or he'll call me and say, 'How's it going?' " He is famous for never missing appointments, often scheduling several different flights simultaneously to make sure he gets out in time. Even on September 11, 2001, when he was stuck in Philadelphia, he hired a car and driver to get him to a meeting in Raleigh.

For most people, this lifestyle would be a brutal sacrifice. But to hear Charan tell it, it is his own priorities that are in order, not all those frantic executives who try to do it all and merely manage to disappoint and alienate everyone around them, from their neglected spouses, to their rushed customers and clients, to their friends who don't bother calling anymore. "This is all vacation for me," he says. "If you love your job, this is the juice of life."

The real thing that interested me about this article is that it mentions Larry Bossidy, who I have met and used to work for at AlliedSignal, and C.K. Prahalad, who I took a class from in business school. He was real smart.