Feature story
Knowing the numbers
Consider this quote from Harold geneen, the former chairman of IT&T: "To be good at your business, you have to knock the numbers-cold." Success in any business comes back to the numbers. You will rely on them to make decisions, and managers will use them to evaluate your performance. That is there whether your job involves marketing, production, management, or information systems.
In business, accounting and financial statements are the means for communicating the numbers. If you don't know how to read financial statements, you can't really know your business.
When Jack Stack and 11 other managers purchased Springfield ReManufacturing Corporation (src) for 10 cents a share, it was a failing.