The full title of this book by Michael Teng is
Corporate Turnaround: Nursing a sick company back to health
In my review posted on Amazon.co.uk, I gave it 4 Stars. This means it is Good and Well Worth Reading.
Here is my review.
A proper book about business turnarounds
This is a proper book about business turnarounds.
It compares business health to personal health and shows how the turnaround process is similar to the medical process of diagnosis, prescription of a treatment plan and cure. This is a useful analogy but the author pushes it too far and it becomes tiresome. The three stages used in the book are surgery, resuscitation and nursing.
The author is Asian (from Singapore). This has three effects on the book. The first is to bring in Eastern philosophies as a complement to Western ideas. The second is that the stories and examples are often based in Asia or Australasia. It also gives the book a global feel when so many American books rarely see the world outside of the USA.
The book is packed with guidance on how to fix the business. It takes you through a structured process of first getting in control of the business and then rebuilding it.
There are times when it gets a little too Asian focused for Western readers, unless they want to expand there but, overall, it’s a minor issue. I also wish the book used the kindle table of contents to make it easier to jump around within the digital book. The presentation is also dense. I’d have liked to have seen more paragraphs and white space on the screen to make it easier to read.
I also get the feeling that the book was written many years ago and has been updated (Confirmed when I got back to Amazon). Some of the examples, and especially in the high technology industries like IT and consumer electronics are old. I remember them but it may be a problem for readers in their 20s or 30s.
Other times the book loses its focus on turnaround and starts to sound like a more normal business strategy book. Yes these strategies need to be discussed but in a setting where time and money are not so constrained. The third phase, called nursing is all about building a culture to sustain the business through future challenges.
Customers needs and priorities will still change, new competitors will appear, perhaps with big advantages from new technologies and the economic cycle will continue to rise and fall. Strong businesses adapt to these challenges, weak companies fall back into trouble. A turnaround business needs to learn how to be able to reinvent itself rather than stick with the current ways of doing things. These businesses need to be curious and creative.
This continual renewal stage also include a discussion of how Qi or internal energy has a vital role to play. This is another section where Eastern philosophies may challenge your thinking and even make you feel uncomfortable. I think you can tell whether a business is vibrant or lethargic and it would normally be wrapped up in thoughts about the culture of the business.
I don’t disagree with the long term need for stage 3 but I think the author has the balance wrong. Stage 1 is when time is against you yet you need to be clear on what you’re going to do and why. By stage 3, the business leaders have the time to read much more widely to learn these important skills of long term business building. In the short term, unless the turnaround team gets things right, there is no long term.
For about a third of the book, I thought I was heading for a five stars rating but little niggles started to appear, as mentioned above. I still think it’s an important book on turnaround and I’m glad I’ve read it.
If you’re in a turnaround situation, this isn’t a book to read all the way through immediately, it’s one where you should read the section most relevant to where the business is and then work on moving forward and building positive momentum. Otherwise you risk getting bogged down.
You can buy the book at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.
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