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Some people have worry beads. Others have framed photos of their kids, a Bible, or a comforting CD as their touchstone when they're out on the road, away from everything they miss and love. But for Ram Charan, one of the world's most renowned management consultants and authors, the symbol that all is right with the world is exactly the thing that can send most people's blood pressure soaring. It is the small wheeled black suitcase, lurking just outside his frame of vision, waiting patiently to be transported once again. It is this suitcase that is Charan's closest companion as he crisscrosses the globe in search of the next vexing business problem, the next needy executive.

Ram Charan is a knight errant of the 21st century, choosing to live nowhere and go everywhere in his quest to help businesses solve their thorniest conundrums. He does not own a home--or even rent one--has no nuclear family or significant material possessions, and he has his assistants FedEx his clean clothes to him. He doesn't play golf or vie for the best tables at power lunch spots. Irresistibly drawn to the corporate world's danger zones, he is in perpetual motion, working for the largest and most powerful companies seven days a week, 365 days a year. Most people would call such an existence bizarre, but for Charan, it's the ideal life. "I tell you, I am a lucky man," he says, brown eyes sparkling like his ever-present cuff links. "I get to do what I love to do."

What Charan loves to do--what he has concluded is his life's purpose--is to solve business problems. With his plainspoken, Socratic approach, he helps demolish organizational silos or persuade entrenched executives to change their points of view. He has written or cowritten 10 books, including the top-selling Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (Crown Business, 2002), with Larry Bossidy, and his latest offering, Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business: 10 Tools You Can Use Monday Morning (Crown Business, 2004). Unlike most consultants, he has no Web site, newsletter, or marketing team. His business comes by word-of-mouth referrals. "He is an Indian guru who found that consulting was his life's calling," says Noel Tichy, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of Michigan who has worked with Charan for more than 20 years.

This almost religious devotion to the altar of commerce has brought him much earthly prominence. Charan, 64, has become an indispensable right-hand man for hundreds of top managers. After Jeffrey Immelt took over from Jack Welch as CEO of General Electric, for example, the first outside person he turned to for advice was Charan. Equally telling, he serves as a minister without portfolio; companies seek him out for his "wise man" approach rather than choosing a consultant with a narrow specialty in reengineering or organizational behavior. He's considered such an asset, in fact, that many of his clients are willing to do something that's awfully rare in the executive suite: to publicly acknowledge a consultant and give him the credit for helping them change their companies. "Ram will take an idea and make it better," says John C. Hodgson, executive vice president at DuPont, which has been working with Charan in different capacities for close to 15 years. "I use him as a sounding board. I value his thinking, his creativity, and his unbiased view of the world."