From running a multi-billion dollar business to selling fruit on the street, the CEO and the vendor share the same street-smart instincts or "business acumen" that are the essential skills to running a business. A CEO wants his or her people to understand business basics, from cash flow, to ROI, to sniffing out new opportunities and eventually becoming more involved in the decision-making that leads to bigger profits. The more you get what the CEO wants you to know, the faster your company will grow!

Liz Coffey and her colleagues coach top CEOs, addressing the 10 primary concerns that keep them sleepless in their executive suites:

• Developing bifocal vision
• Getting the organizational structure right
• Creating time to maximize impact
• Energizing the organization through leadership
• Delivering strategy through the top team
• Managing the board
• Communicating with stakeholders all of the time
• Meeting the diversity challenge
• Surviving the global jungle
• Balancing work/life demands

Each chapter is set within a specific context, sets a challenge, and defines the results -showing how each client was guided towards these desired results.

There are multiple pressures facing any CEO today. With rapid technological advances, a greater risk when going into any international enterprise, and changing regulations, the organizations of global proportions require a CEO who can communicate, motivate, develop talent, push for growth and profits, run a multi-lingual, multi-cultural corporation…all the while maintaining that delicate work/life balance.

Cheese is a metaphor for what you want to have in life - whether it is a good job, a loving relationship, money, or spiritual peace of mind. Cheese is what we think will make us happy, and when circumstances take it away, different people deal with change in different ways. Four characters in this delightful parable represent parts of ourselves whenever we are confronted with change. Discover how you can let change work to your advantage and let it lead you to success!

Managing a company need not be complicated, and being a CEO should be conceptually simple. True, business leaders face difficult problems and challenges, but they eventually get the results they want. Complications arise when CEOs refuse or fail to focus on the source of the problem. They are distracted by side-issues and get confused because they succumb to one or more of the five temptations that face every business leader.

The author uses a fable to expose the inherent human temptations that create barriers to successful leadership. CEOs, at one time or another, fail to overcome the temptations which are deceptively simple since they are considered human nature. The book sweeps away the confusions that prevent managers from achieving their goal — guiding them away from the pitfalls of the five temptations.