Good, but could have been better

I took this book on a six-day trip that involved plenty of travel and a six-hour each way at a transit airport. This was the only book I had carried. Yet, I could not go beyond the first few pages. I got down to reading it only when the deadline for this review came closer and the oversized spectacles of this section's editor, as seen through my mind's eye, began to loom even larger.

That is not really a comment on the quality of this book. Sunil Maheshwari, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has done a competent job in compiling the case studies of six Indian companies that turned the corner.

His approach is very meticulous. In fact, he makes very good use of the introduction, emphasising that the study of organisational decline is every bit as important as that of organisational growth, to set the tone.

There are detailed sections on the causes and early signal of decline, the stakeholders' response to it and the turnaround process. The case studies too are detailed and cover all aspects. The exhibits with each (the structure, financial numbers, employee details, expenses, savings, operating performance) are immaculate.

Praise is indeed due for what the professor has done. But so is lament, for what he could have done but did not. It is easy to use words like "thorough" and "meticulous" for the writer, but any more gush is hard to muster.

Maheshwari deals with the subject like he would deliver a lecture in class, which follows a format, to management students, who would have no choice but to listen attentively. Thus, the turnaround process is divided into change in leadership, forming the team at the top, change in strategy, retrenchment of assets and people, upgrading technology, financial restructuring, organisational change and support of the parent company. Perhaps, the writer could have gone beyond these.

The bigger issue I would like to join with the professor is over his selection of the cases. Any takers for Amal Products Ltd, or British Oxygen Company India Ltd? The other four""Tinplate Company of India, Scooters India, Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilizers Ltd and Torrent Gujarat Biotech Ltd""do not set the heartbeat racing either.

There was a book on the same subject in late 2001 by Pradip N Khandwalla, which had studied a maddening 120 cases. Maheshwari has shown much more wisdom in keeping his pick confined to six, but could he not have chosen more exciting examples?

Instead of Tinplate, could it not be Tata Motors, which has made an astounding turnaround since plunging deep into losses when this century opened? How Rahul Bajaj's son, Rajiv, transformed Bajaj Auto into a motorcycle maker and saved it from inevitable decline is a fascinating story. Venu Srinivasan has brought TVS back from the brink not once but twice, the second time after parting ways with Suzuki. What about Essar Steel, the company at the centre of an ignominious corporate debt restructuring exercise by the domestic financial institutions in the middle and late 1990s, which is flying high right now? In the public sector, there is the fascinating story of Steel Authority of India Ltd.

These stories and the personalities behind them (Ratan Tata, the Bajaj family, Srinivasan, the Ruia brothers and a handful of bureaucrats) would have been more interesting to the shareholder as well as the observers of Indian industry. It might also lure those who do not have any direct interest in the subject.

Even with his own selection, Maheshwari could perhaps have tried to tell the stories within the stories. He raises expectations in one of the early chapters when he deals with the process signals and points out how, in a company going downhill, there is a return to bureaucratic processes and disproportionate staff power becomes visible. It would have been nice to read how it happened in the companies he has studied.

The book's back cover captures it succinctly: "With its detailed and analytical case studies, Turnaround Excellence is a classic discourse on corporate degeneration and rejuvenation for practising managers, management students and professionals."

This "discourse" is very likely to find readership, but one that is predominantly need-based. In this category will fall those with special interest in its subject, students for whom it is made part of the curriculum, or review writers who have formidable bespectacled editors to answer to.

Turnaround Excellence
Six studies of corporate renewal

Sunil Kumar Maheshwari
Penguin Portfolio
Price: Rs 350