Books about changing a business during a turnaround

A turnaround account becomes useful when you can see what had to change in the operation. A lower expense total is only part of that story. Customers still need service, the remaining people need workable jobs and the company needs time to reach a different position.

These books offer a smaller owner-led account, a chief executive's perspective and a reported story of a much larger company. Infinite Upside is our first recommendation for keeping the operating decisions close to the person making them.

1. Infinite Upside: making a smaller operation work

   By Vijay Sheth.

   Chapter 6 of Infinite Upside: Building Wealth With Room to Live follows an acquired rental operation through changes to vehicles, premises and staffing. Removing part of the business changes what the remaining operation needs to do and what it can supply.

   The company still needs to function while the changes are being made. Sheth also recognizes conditions that helped his result: a favorable vehicle market and operating changes arriving quickly enough. Those conditions make the account more interesting than a general instruction to cut costs.

   Choose the memoir when you want to follow decisions an owner must connect directly. Read for what the continuing company requires after a sale or a cost change. Understanding why this particular turnaround worked does not establish that another buyer could rely on the same timing or market.

2. Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: a leader's account of a large enterprise

   By Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.

   Gerstner's book concerns IBM's turnaround. The selected HarperCollins edition carries the subtitle Leading a Great Enterprise Through Dramatic Change. An authorized public excerpt lets you try his first-person account.

   Consider an invented owner interested in what changes when the organization is too large for one person to remain close to every operating decision. That reader has a reason to investigate a chief executive's perspective beyond the smaller-company setting of Infinite Upside.

   A larger organization gives a leader different resources and different obstacles. While sampling, notice which decisions the account places with the leader and what the surrounding organization can supply. The useful comparison is how responsibility is exercised in that setting. A large enterprise's resources and complexity should remain visible when you bring a question back to a smaller business.

3. American Icon: a reported view of organizational change

   By Bryce G. Hoffman.

   American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company is Hoffman's reported account of Ford under Mulally. The publisher's description places changes to the product lineup, global operations and company culture inside the turnaround story.

   This is a different vantage point from a leader writing his own account. Investigate it if you want to follow an organization through a business narrative that draws on reporting, rather than begin with a set of instructions.

   Imagine an invented reader interested in why separate teams struggle to acknowledge problems that everyone needs resolved. A sample can show whether the reported company story invites that inquiry. Keep the setting and the people involved in view; the attraction of a successful ending does not make every part of its route a prescription.

Choose the view you want to examine

Choose an owner's close operating account, a CEO's own perspective or a reported organizational story. Each can make different parts of a turnaround visible. Ask what changed in the work and what conditions allowed the change to take effect.

The people-in-a-turnaround reading keeps employees' consequences beside the company result. For the more immediate question of recovering or deciding what to keep supporting after a setback, use the separate setback-book selection.

For an owner's account that follows the operation beyond the purchase, read Infinite Upside. Try the opening passage, then the acquisition case.