Organizational Turnarounds with a Human Touch
Baldev Seekri spent over forty years in business, retiring from Texas Instruments, a Fortune 500 company, as a general manager. His extensive experience serves him well as a platform for his engaging book, Organizational Turnarounds with a Human Touch.
What Seekri does exceedingly well is distill the subject of turnarounds and corporate leadership into the simplest of terms. He says the defining insight into turning an organization around is, “A simple mind-set pursuing a simple process and making the results look simple.” Seekri intentionally uses the word “simple” three times in his quote just as he strives for simplicity throughout the book.
Seekri explores the “Simple Mind-Set” in part one of the book, concentrating on the inspirational aspects of leadership, ways to create an environment of total learning, using sharing as a leadership technique, and explaining the role of the creative process and enablers in developing “a human solution” to business challenges.
In part two, which makes up the bulk of the book, the reader discovers a four-phase turnaround process that moves from self-pity to self-esteem, from self-esteem to winning attitude, from winning attitude to growing confidence, and from growing confidence to authentic pride. The author carefully leads the reader through each phase of the process, combining theory with real-world examples. He employs numerous useful diagrams and charts to illustrate the text and includes “a quick refresher” at the end of each phase to reinforce the material covered.
Seekri offers “A Helping Hand” in part three, demonstrating how to make results look simple and discussing how leaders can develop their own “inspiring knack.” He defines an inspiring knack as something “that can transform your view of the [turnaround] journey from a forced trip to an adventurous pursuit and can provide you with abundance of true leadership experience and authentic pride in the course and aftermath of your journey.”
At the conclusion, the author points out that his book is a “radical” departure from the typical management book in the sense that it “is written from the inside-out by relating results in the practical world and then synthesizing the principles that produced those results.” Indeed, it is Seekri’s very real hands-on experience that make the book’s content relevant and applicable. Organizational Turnarounds with a Human Touch is a masterful work that should be of lasting value to any manager or leader faced with the challenge of turning around an organization.
Reviewed by
Barry Silverstein
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
