Customer Reviews

The Turnaround Kid: What I Learned Rescuing America's Most Troubled Companies

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I suspect most people will buy this book for Miller's inside stories of salvaging (or attempting to salvage) value from failed companies from Chysler to Delco. They'll get their money's worth, there are concise, well-written accounts of the projects, including information that had not been previously reported.

Aside from the business, Miller has opened up about some aspects of his life more deeply than most business autobiographers. In particular, his complex and unusual relationship to his wife Maggie (who dies in the book, Miller has since remarried) is described in sharply-etched stories that will leave readers puzzling long after the book is finished.

There is also plenty of grist for Millerphiles and Millerphobes. You can see the career arc from the guy who wouldn't even mention the word "bankruptcy" at Chrysler in the late 1970s, to the guy who used bankruptcy like a rapier in the 1990s and 2000s (including becoming the poster child for rich retention agreements as he filed for Delco just before a legal change that would have restricted such "golden handcuff" payments). His fresh openness with the press was a major asset at Chrysler, by the end of the book he is refusing to comment to the press at all. Either Miller got tougher or the world did. But like him or hate him, I think he was the only person in Detroit with honesty and credibility to make everyone face some harsh reality, and he deserves a good share of the credit for the positive steps in management/labor relations of the past couple of years. If you want to hate him anyway, you can hate him for appearing to enjoy himself while forcing painful adjustments on everyone.

However, the best reason to read this book is something I never expected to find. I've always wondered why anyone with alternatives even bothered with these distressed companies. You'd think shareholders would sell, managers and workers would find better places to work, customers would take their business elsewhere; and let the opportunists fight the hopeless for any remaining crumbs. Miller has an appreciation for corporate greatness. He starts each account with the former glories of the company, not just in terms of outside accomplishments, but how many people gave it their working lives, and were rewarded with financial security and genuine pride. This is not a guy working only for shareholders or creditors or management (and certainly not only for workers or customers). This is a guy who expects all those groups to sacrifice so corporate greatness can be restored. Right or wrong, he's not a liquidator or union-buster or deadbeat, he tries to be a turnaround kid.

I generally liked this book and recommend it for those interested in the business world. Steve Miller has had something of an unconventional career. Mid-level auto executive, tucked away in a foreign sub away from the power center of his company, that rises to a challenge that his previous experience would not have seemingly prepared him for. From there, he builds a career as a leading turnaround manager and a guy that is generally thought of as a realist when dealing in very difficult situations. That part of the story reinforces the view that successful careers are a marathon and that sometimes the path that you didn't expect is the one that bears the most fruit. (How's that for buzzword laden sentence!)

In terms of those who are looking at this as a road map on how to execute a turnaround and value a business following a Chapter 11, do not pass go. It isn't that kind of book. If you're a novice looking to understand the Chapter 11 process, this is not the right book for you. (Try Distressed Debt Analysis by Stephen Moyer.) But, for those who are trying to run a business that needs a kickstart, there are some valuable comments on how to deal effectively with your employees, creditors, and customers. I think Mr. Miller comes across as honest and candid when he is involved in those situations.

What makes this book unique is the personal part of the story. By his own account, Mr. Miller's greatest asset and greatest source of concern. perhaps, was his spouse. I found his honesty on that subject to be refreshing and the sign of a man who is comfortable in his own skin.

The one knock I have are some inconsistencies in aspects of his career that did not go well. His efforts to explain why the Board at Waste Management failed in their duty to provide effective oversight of the company's management came across as a CYA answer to hold off plaintiff's attorney in a lawsuit.

Mr. Miller also completely bypasses what occurred at Chrysler's finance subsidiary within just a few months of leaving the company in 1992. He is candid about his attempt to unseat Lee Iacocca, but he makes no mention of the fact that the finance sub had a gun to their head with an expiring, and fully funded, bank deal in the summer of 1992. His lack of oversight with the folks at the American Center should have been noted, if for no other reason than as a cautionary tale.

I picked up this book based on the title, particularly the "What I learned" part. I was hoping for specific nougats of wisdom about patterns: those decisions, actions, skills and qualities that make the difference in turning a company around. If these were included, I never saw them because after several chapters of rambling personal descriptions I stopped reading. A synopsis or recap of major points at the end of each chapter would have helped. Sometimes I wondered where the point was buried.

We'll have to see if I leave it at two stars, or reduce it to one in the next few weeks....

Miller certainly has the resume to write a book like this. Unfortunately, he has the ego for a shelf of books like this, all condensed into this one volume.

While I enjoyed the facts of Miller's experiences, and even his judgements and choices, I kept choking on his tremendous self esteem. I found two of his targets particularly troubling. His venom towards Lee Iacocca was unjustified. As an Iacocca fan, I knew most of Lee's foibles before reading this book, but have never seen him in the overall negative context that Miller portrays here. Secondly, I found it downright uncomfortable when Miller pointed out so many of his wife's flaws, but none of his own.

There are many egocentrics who see the world as Miller does, fortunately they have the judgement to NOT publish their internal monologue.

I feel a little guilty giving Miller only one star because, over the course of the book, it becomes so painfully obvious that he's not just a greedy free-market fundamentalist, but a deeply deluded man with no awareness of his own behavior. On the surface, this is a series of self-congratulatory anecdotes, bordering on grandiosity, about Miller's career in "saving" the auto, steel, and insurance industries.

Laughable as the premise may seem now (the book was released months before Wall Street started going belly up), it's apparent even from Miller's own words that his peripatetic career is the result of his own repeated failures, as he busts up unions, negotiates federal bailouts, and (in a fit of manic bellicosity) drives Federal-Mogul into an asbestos lawsuit they never had any chance of winning (which he somehow uses to launch a lengthy diatribe favoring tort reform). He's not in demand; he's essentially getting fired and doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference.

More tragic still, what at first appears to be a mere manipulation of his wife's death from brain cancer (he trots her out every time he starts to look like a bad guy) quickly reveals itself. By his own admission, his wife was profoundly unhappy in their marriage, making numerous attempts to flee him - which he faithfully recounts but can't begin to comprehend.

Any compassionate editor would have stopped this before allowing Miller to broadcast his own emotional deficits quite so unflatteringly, but perhaps it does give us some insight into the biggest players of the current financial crisis.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable autobiography of Steve Miller, a rising Ford executive who became the go to guy for companies in crisis over more than two decades. At Chrysler, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Olympia & York, Morrison Knudsen, Federal Mogul, Waste Management, Reliance Group Holdings, Bethlehem Steel, Aetna and Delphi, he parachuted into companies on the brink of failure and tried to come up with the best solution. Sometimes the outcome is a roaring success, other times he has to settle for the best of a series of unpleasant choices, and other times he is ineffective.

This book is more Miller's autobiography than a how-to guide to fixing broken companies. The book is only 230 pages long and each company's situation is only covered at a high level. Miller's strength as a businessman is his ability to take a fresh, hard look at the companies, face up to the cold reality and work with all parties to come up with the best possible solution. His book has many on the same strengths; he offers what appears to be an honest (sometimes brutally so) assessment of his own successes and failures, as well as those of the other parties in the drama.

What emerges is the story of a leader who enjoys the excitement of trying to solve complex problems while trying, and succeeding, to do the right thing for his family and the people and companies that depend on him.

I bought the audio version of The Turnaround Kid and decided to stop listening to it half way through for a few reasons.

1) I'm particularly not interested in his life story, the sections at the beginning just seem to drag on and are very winded. I just want to get to the meat and potatoes of what he's trying to explain no talking about things like his wife's medical condition because frankly I couldn't care less.

2) I also decided to do a little background check on Mr. Miller's accomplishments and failures. Well Mr. Miller is more of a failure regarding turnaround than a success. He has also lied numerous times to employees such as the folks over at Bethlehem Steel.

3) His presentation skills are scary at best. He seems shy, weak and timid which should make any employee or manager head for the exits.

Of course you will only see his success on his resume or on the Internet. Mr. Miller is more of a finance guy than a leader and he enters into industries that he knows nothing about such as his current Board role over at Symantec.

Why am I harping like this? Because I felt duped into buying his audio book and had I known what I know now the purchase would have never been made.

I bought this book because I am a lawyer who recently found himself managing a relative's retail store that used to do several million dollars a year and was very profitable but is now failing. I thought this book would offer insights on how to turn the store around.

The book offered little in that regard.

Instead, there was a lot about how the author suffered and was abused by others while trying to save the world. The whole book seemed to have been written or at least coached by a public relations firm to try to fix the reputation of someone who made a lot of unpopular decisions.

Yeah he wears out his elbow patting himself on the back, but it's a pretty good look at what you do when you're dealt a weak hand.

Steve Miller, the former CEO of Delphi, narrates the events that thrust him into being a turnaround expert. Steve, because of his childhood experiences on the family lumber mill, strives to achieve turnarounds at his companies while ensuring valuable jobs are not lost.
The initial chapters are a tad bit slow because of the focus on family and personal life, but build a good foundation for the later one on his fast moving corporate career. The main takeaway I got from this book is that people in your life matter and can be a good influence, i.e., if you let them be.