At this new area of CEOU.com, you can read a number of book reviews about Leonard Bertain's book, "The New Turnaround." Either scroll through this page -- or use the pulldown menu to jump stright to the particular review that interests you. Select a review from this pull-down menu, then hit "GO!" --> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Mark My Word: A Novel Idea," by Mark Albert "Review of the Turnaround," by Manufacturing Competitive Frontiers "Solid Business Lessons That Masquerade as a Novel," By John Eckhouse "The New Turnaround" by Duncan Maxwell Anderson "A Better Way to Turn Companies Around," by Jack Hickey "Business Trends Book Review: The New Turnaroud," by Dorothy Wangman "A New Turnaround Triples Sales," by Duncan Maxwell Anderson "Manufacturing in a New Age," by Michael Chazin ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ORDER THE BOOK NOW VIA OUR ONLINE ORDER FORM! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MARK: MY WORD A Novel Idea, March 1994 by Mark Albert First, there was The Goal, the ground-breaking "business novel" by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox. Now there is The New Turn-around by Leonard Bertain, another business novel also featuring the hu-man drama that arises out of a pro-duction crisis in a factory. The Goal works so well because it is told as a thriller. A plant manager frantically races against time to keep his underperforming factory from being shut down. In the meantime, his preoccupation with production bottlenecks and missed delivery dates turns him into a neglectful husband at home. Can the factory be saved? Can the marriage be saved? In The New Turnaround, the story is told from a machinist's point of view. He and his best buddy lose their jobs at a plant that can no longer compete. Because of his experience with CNC equipment, he lands a job at another factory, but his friend, an old-time skilled machinist, gets passed over. The friend ends up drinking too much and dies in a car wreck. It turns out that the new job is in a factory plagued by the same wasteful finger-pointing and cover-ups that ruined the other plant. Then anew plant manager comes on board and he brings in a Dr. Elbie, who helps the plant discover a new approach to conducting its business. Both of these novels were written not to provide entertainment but to advance new managernent theories. Goldratt has a new method of scien-tific production control to get across. Bertain wants us to see how the en-tire corporate culture must change from top to bottom for a company to turn itself around. That a novel, a work of fiction, should be an effective "teaching tool" is quite a thought. What happens in a factory, any factory, is more than what may be surmised by looking at its bottom line. In these stories, lives are at stake. The management concepts are not mere abstractions, but flesh-and-blood. chips-and-coolant, dollars-and-cents af-fairs. The ideas have consequences. If you believe that how a factory is managed is indeed a vital concern. then a novel is the right choice to make new thinking come alive. In a novel we get to.feel what's going on, We experience for ourselves the power and excitement of change. At last, running a machine shop has become both the domain of sci-ence and the stuff of art. The New Turnaround is published by North River Press, (800) 893-0004, THE NEW TURNAROUND: A BREAKTHROUGH FOR PEOPLE, PROFITS AND CHANGE Manufacturing Competitiveness Frontiers January 1994, page 37 Leonard Bertain North River Press (1993) ISBN 0-88427-096-3 The world of manufacturing is changing rapidly and solutions that were optimum a few years ago are failing. Change is always difficult but it is generally accepted that a complete change in corporate culture is mandatory. This may be referred to as total quality management, continuous improvement or worldclass companies. The common thread is that the culture must change so that everyone from the owner to the receptionist is involved and contributing. There are many books promoting this concept, but for most people the concept is difficult to understand and accept. This book is MUST READING FOR ALL FRONTIERS READERS. WE SERIOUSLY SUGGEST THAT EACH OF YOU RUSH OUT, BUY, AND READ THIS BOOK. This is a manufacturing parable written as a novel. It is written from the point of view of machinist who had been fired by one company that had failed by following the traditional paradigm. He was hired by another company that was also in trouble. This machinist describes problems at the new company, the consultant with crazy ideas, and the transformation of this company into a world class competitor. This novel does an excellent job of setting the stage and introducing the concepts involved in transforming an organization into a state-of-the-art world class organization. In less than 200 pages the author does an incredibly good job of introducing concepts and illustrating the technologies involved. One could read many books and attend many lectures without ever gaining the level of understanding provided by this novel. As stated earlier, this book is strongly recommended. We also seriously urge that Frontiers readers give or at least recommend this book to others. This novel is certainly readable by anyone who has read even part of the abundant management literature, i.e., by all managers within a company. Since it is written from the point of view of a worker, it "might" be suitable for workers within the company assuming they have at least some background in management systems. There certainly isn't any reason not to expose the workers to this book. If our readers haven't gotten the message, once again, we are convinced that this book is MUST READING. The title of the book is less than clever and this does little to sell one on the contents. Don't let the title fool you, the book really is interesting. This book is admittedly a copycat approach based on Goldratt's "The Goal," i.e., a novel that illustrated changing technologies. This book is available from local bookstores or North River Press, Box 309, Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520. Telephone: 800/893-0004. MANAGER'S BOOKSHELF Solid Business Lessons Masquerade as Novel San Francisco Chronicle B5 December 13, 1993 The New Turnaround By Leonard Bertain North River Press, Croton-on-Hudson, Now York; $30 BY JOHN ECKHOUSE Chronicle Staff Writer When the phone rings at 2:30 a.m., trouble begins for this book's hero. His best friend, Char-lie, another journeyman machinist, has been killed in an automo-bile crash. For the next few pages we learn about Charlie, the hero (whose name is never mentioned in the book), their families and the financial troubles they endure af-ter being laid of f at Osgood's, the local factory. It's an unusual beginning for a serious business book, but first -time Oakland author Leonard Ber-tain aims to teach by entertaining the reader. He provides solid busi-ness lessons for workers and man-agers alike in the form of a novel. We follow the hero to his new job at troubled Quality Pump. While meeting typical workers such as Gus and Buck - no-non-sense guys who love hunting and fishing and don't take kindly to change, we also learn the secrets of turning a dispirited, money-los-ing plant into a model of success. Through the protagonist's eyes, Bertain takes us on a step-by-step journey showing how worker mo-rale and profits can increase simul-taneously by altering the way work is performed - and without spending much money. Some may call the methods Bertain describes worker-empow-erment, total quality management, focusing on the value-added or re- engineering. The author prefers not to apply buzzwords. Yet it's a subject he knows inti-mately after years of serving as a consultant to troubled companies. Bertain has helped engineer many business turnarounds, especially at small, family-owned unionized companies, using the methods de-scribed in the book: train workers in business operations, listen care-fully to their ideas, then put their suggestions into practice. As the book demonstrates, workers on the shop floor general-ly know best what equipment and procedures will work and which will lose money and cause exces-sive waste. But workers will only pipe up if they aren't afraid of be-ing ignored or ridiculed - or of losing their jobs because of the higher productivity. The turnaround expert in the book, Jack Elbie - a slightly dis-guised version of the author -promises workers at the outset that neither he nor the company president is out to eliminate their jobs. Elbie teaches the employees that by increasing productivity, they actually will preserve and in-crease jobs. The underlying theme of El-bie's classes: No blame! No excus-es! If you can get away from trying to blame someone for problems, then you can get on to fixing them. Though based on complex prin-ciples, Elbie's lessons boil down to this: Find out what adds value and then redesign work flow to maxi-mize the process of creating value and minimize waste. It sounds sim-ple but, like the workers in this business novel, it takes time to learn and implement. Not everyone can adapt. Mid-way through the process, the own-er of Quality Pump has to fire one of his most senior and trusted em-ployees because the man simply cannot accept changes in the way the factory operates. "We had at least one guy like him in every company where we have done training," Elbie says. "At some point, he is either in or he is out. He fishes or he cuts bait." In the end, even the most dis-trustful workers from the shop floor, the computer room, the sales office and the accounting depart-ment buy into Elbie's process. Within six months, Quality Pump goes from near death to major success. That's just what Ber-tain accomplished in real life at Pilgrim Fireplace in Richmond, Kallista in San Leandro and Gener-al Grinding in Oakland. REVIEWS: Books and Tapes Success Magazine Review of The New Turnaround April 1994, page 56 Edited by Duncan Maxwell Anderson Leonard Bertain's novel of management ideas The New Turnaround tells how a sagging company called Quality Pump becomes world-class manufacturer when a new manager gets his plant to reinvent itself through the principles of W. Edward Deming and other pioneers of' Japanese-style management. A consultant, Dr. Elbie, tells him, "Employees are an undeclared asset of any company." That means training is not a cost, but an investment. The New Turnaround explains how to see your business differently and overcome employees' fear of change: 0 For every step in your business process, ask your-self if it adds value or provides essential support. If* it (toes neither, it's waste. Cut it. The 80/20 rule, revisited: You can eliminate 80 percent of the waste by spending only 20 percent of what it would cost you to get rid of' 100 percent of the waste. Go for tile cluick gain now. * Don't blame other people or departments for problems. Look in the mirror, take responsibility for improving results, and cooperate across divi-sional lines to make things work. The New Turn-around suggests that most employees - after some defiance - will embrace the process. - Niklas Von Daehne A BETTER WAY TO TURN COMPANIES AROUND I&CS Editors Views by Jack Hickey March 1994 Competitive pressures-both here in the U.S. and around the world-continue to build. Companies that expect to survive these pressures and grow their businesses must stay abreast of the newest approaches to the manufacturing process. Through the years, we at I&CS have done our best to keep you ap-prised of these new approaches-ap-proaches that include ISO 9000, Concur-rent Development, Dynamic Perfor-mance, Reengineering your Company, Focusing on Results, and Agile Manufacturing, to name just a few. In keeping with this practice, we now call your attention to a new approach to a prob-lem that's becoming all too common in the manufacturing arena -the need to turn around a once great company that has lost its ability to adapt effec-tively to change. The approach is de-scribed in Leonard Bertain's book titled The New Turnaround*. When used in the traditional busi-ness sense, the word turnaround typi-cally sends shivers of fear throughout an organization. It connotes a process in which a turnaround "expert" ar-rives at the door of a troubled compa-ny, and begins to turn things around by cutting costs and firing people. The process Bertain describes is to-tally different. As he explains: "...the process described is a form of discov-ery for the participants. Each step is a new discovery. It is an enjoyable but difficult journey. The uncertainty of the next step of discovery is painful for those who wish to preserve their old habits and systems. But the new sys-tem is more efficient, more productive and more comfortable for employees, as everyone is focused on maximizing the value delivered by the business * And not surprisingly, the new organi-zation is a very pleasant place in which to work. "...On a grand scale, it can be said that this process allows " members of the organization to discover improvements in the work, which pays for the changing process as it progresses. The employees discover that changes occur very quickly when everyone has the same focus. Managers and workers alike see profit for what it really is - the lifeblood of the company. They dis-cover that it is not only OK to talk about profits, it's necessary." According to Bertain, as the discov-ery process proceeds, an important un-derlying theme must be No Blame. Says Bertain: "This allows the partici-pants to introduce contrary ideas and observations without negative conse-quences. Without this condition, peo-ple are reluctant to introduce an idea or a suggestion that might jeopardize their job. No Blaine eliminates that risk and expedites the change pro-cess. " He adds that, with this process, though no one will lose his or her job, that job may change. The book is only 196 pages long, and reads like a well-written novel. Best of all, the characters will bring to mind people in your own organization. Read it. 1 think you'll enjoy it. I did. 'The New Turnaround, by Leonard Bertain, is available from North River Press, 321 Main Street Great Barrington, MA 01230 BUSINESS TRENDS BOOK REVIEW The New Turnaround A Breakthrough for People, Profits and Change Reviewed by Dorothy Wangman Leonard Bertain, Ph.D. 196 pp. $30.00 North River Press The New Tumaround, a novel by Dr. Leonard Bertain, president of Bertain Consulting Group, is the latest entry into the profitability/productivity sweepstakes. After flirting with Japanese methods in the '80s and spending billions of dollars, American industry is still looking for an-swers. Dr. Bertain's theory is that "the fault is not in our cir-cumstances, but in ourselves, that one of the biggest barriers to getting on with the job of being competitive is that too much time is spent worrying about who might get blamed and defending sacred cows. In addition, there still is the feel-ing on the part of the majority of managers that thinking is not a part of most worker job descriptions." Millions of laid-off workers are looking for jobs because, although they worked hard, their companies were not pro-ductive, competitive, or profitable. In The New Tumaround, the "hero" and narrator is a laid-off machinist now facing job loss again. This time, however, the owner of Osgood Pump This isn't a particularly exciting novel - Bertain is not Dick Francis - but he does an effective job of developing his theme that "the work leads, and the people follow." The choice of unionized, blue-collar machine shop workers rather than board aspiring MBAs is refreshing and plausible. The kind of work involved lends itself well to the author's theories of what kind of work is involved. Does it add value, or is it waste? The worries, rivalries, antagonisms, hopes, fears and frustrations at every level of activity help in developing the plot to a happy ending of increased productivity, competitiveness and profitability. Is it realistic? That, I suppose, depends on the reader's point of view or frame of reference. Logical? To this reviewer, yes, and sensible, too. But perhaps that's the trouble with all theories - if they seem logical and sensible, nobody wants to believe in them. Reviewed by Dorothy Wangman A "NEW TURNAROUND" TRIPLES SALES Success Magazine October 1994, page 12 Jim HENDERSON'S MAIN Customer was breathing down his neck, asking for help in a life-or-death struggle with Japa-nese competitors. For him to survive, Henderson would have to cut prices. The obvious solution for his company, a $3 million semiconductor factory in San Jose, Calif., called Advanced Machine Pro-gramming (AMP), was to auto-mate more, to raise productiv-ity. But he didn't have the cash. Then Henderson heard consultant Len Bertain, author of a book called The New Turnaround, say at a seminar that most barriers to higher productivity are not techno-logical, but social: Motivate 12 SUCCESS OCTOBER 1994 your workers to find better methods, and make it easy for them to keep you informed. "You're spending virtually nothing," says Henderson, "and if you improve produc-tivity by just 10 percent, that can make the difference be-tween break-even and profit." It sounded wonderful, but there was a catch, as Henderson discovered when he hired Bertain. "Dr. Bertain encour-aged the employees to criti-cize the way we ran the busi-ness," says Henderson. "We ate a lot of crow." For instance, the machinists complained that they were spending 20 percent of their time setting up tools on the milling machines between jobs, at a cost of $200,000 per year. The innovation was to let a machinist work while someone else set up the next job for him in the tool crib. To find innovations: People must talk to one another regularly. Also, departments do not have agendas. There is only the company agenda. No blame. Inefficient systems often stay hidden be-cause results are fudged - so no one will be blamed for poor results. The solution is not to punish fudgers, but to outlaw blame. Problems are solved without blaming any-one for causing them. This promotes honesty. Answer Yes or No. Keep measurements simple, answerable by a yes or a no. Say one of your goals is on-time delivery. The workers, who measure them-selves, simply ask at the end of the day, "Did we ship every-thing on time, yes or no?" No excuses asked or offered. If necessary, everyone pitches in until the goal is met. Between process improvements and new technology, AMP's sales tripled in four years - projected at $12 mil-lion for 1994. Late deliveries have gone from 18 percent to near zero, quality has improved from 98 percent to 99.95 per-cent, and revenue per employ-ee has grown 8 percent. "We were lucky we had no money at the start," says Hend-erson. "It saved us from auto-mating wasteful practices, and it got us to finally take full ad-vantage of an under-used re-source: our people." To obtainThe New Turnaround, seepage 86. MARKETING Jumping the Curve There's only one way to stay profitable: Find the next break-through In your Industry and exploit It first. In Jumping th Curve, Nicholas Imparato and Cron Hararl say we must "leave certainty behind In pursuit of the now." As McKinsey's Richard Foster explained In his famous chart (below): When a technology is newly Invented, adding off ort to MANUFACTURING IN A NEW AGE Upholstery Design and Manufacturing by Michael Chazin May 1994 A good deal of the discussion among manufacturers in the '80s centered around how capital investment could improve manufacturing productivity. Automated systems combined with new management concepts - just-in-time manufacturing, quality circles, and employee empowerment to name a few - were discussed and written about until manufacturers - and journalists - were blue in the face. The results weren't always positive. Arthur D. Little Inc. estimates that manufacturers invested $800 billion in capital equipment and another $150 billion in worker training during the past decade to implement new manufacturing approaches. For the most part, the overwhelming majority of manufacturers surveyed by Little weren't improving fast enough in relation to their competition. Millions of laid-off workers are now looking for jobs because, even though they worked hard, their companies were not productive, competitive, or profitable. There are still great companies where hard work can translate into value and profits. The trouble is too many of these great companies are hiding inside underperforming old companies. Two recent examples come to mind. The first is a book: The New Turnaround, published by North River Press. The other is what's been done to improve efficiency at Rowe Furniture Corp. Both have much in common. The book, by Leonard Bertain, Ph.D., explains why industry has been unsuccessful in its quest for quality and profits. "The fault lies not in our circumstances, but in ourselves," says Bertain. Bertain's book describes a logical and effective system for introducing an improved working environment. This new approach can improve sales, productivity, and profits by understanding how The process started by dividing workers into teams where they could voice their opinion. At first workers complained about more personal matters - the state of vending machines and restrooms. Real progress was slow. Rowe eventually installed a gainsharing program called Costban developed by Ross Associates, Asheville, NC. Costban is designed to work speciftcally in manufacturing plants in the furniture and woodworking industries. At Rowe workers help develop more efficient ways to do work, then split the cost savings with the company. Sometimes the simplest of changes can have profound effects on company productivity and profitability. For more information call North River Press, 800/286-2665, or Ross Associates, 704/255-8778.