John Berra's TURNING THE GIANT: Disrupting Your Industry with Persistent Innovation offers an original take on what defines a good leader, as Berra shares his own insights and wisdom gained from his leadership experience over the last twenty years. As he worked from the bottom up, his story proves an inspirational tale and testament to the drive and cost of the American Dream. Themes of resilience and determination are the backbone of the country, and in TURNING THE GIANT we see just how far they can carry someone dedicated to the task. As he writes, “My goal in writing this book wasn’t to create an extended bio of my personal accomplishments but to hopefully offer perspective.”
Berra breaks down his findings into chapters, each focusing on different types of "giants." Management, family, a fear of failure, and other factors will occasionally come up in everyone’s life, making it hard to press on and keep the momentum going. In TURNING THE GIANT, these are all discussed to encourage readers to look at their own "giants" and evaluate how they can find a productive solution to the problems they may be facing. Is there a way these challenges might work in your favor? This whole concept invites readers to approach setbacks and challenges with a different, more positive perspective. The following quote sums it up pretty well: “Winston Churchill said, 'Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.'”
A few times toward the middle, the use of stories begins to meander a little—drifting off topic briefly before circling back to the point. These wanderings are often caught and brought back to the central theme fairly quickly, but it does happen a few times in some of the later chapters. Overall, though, Berra does a good job of staying on topic throughout most of the book, keeping the information simple enough to connect with most readers while still being beneficial and offering valuable tips along the way: “I’ve resisted the urge to include a bunch of graphs and charts […] my goal is to make these principles accessible to everyone.”
—Stephanie Lynn for IndieReader