If you’ve spent any time around business content, you’ve absorbed a certain vocabulary without necessarily noticing it. Crush your goals. Dominate your market. Slay the competition. It’s the language of conflict, applied to almost everything.
John Berra, former Chairman of Emerson Process Management, spent decades in one of the more methodical corners of industry, and what he came away with is a quieter, more durable idea. You don’t crush the things standing in your way. You turn them.
That’s the entire premise of his book Turning the Giant, and it holds up better under scrutiny than most of the combat metaphors it’s replacing.
Where the Idea Came From
It’s worth knowing that John’s philosophy didn’t start in a strategy meeting. It started with wires. Early in his career at Monsanto, he spent his days doing repetitive engineering work, the kind of task that leaves plenty of room to think.
What he kept thinking was: there has to be a better way. That question, asked enough times over enough days, became something more than frustration. John calls it properly channeled frustration, and it became the foundation for everything that followed.
The Giants Don’t Get Smaller. You Get Better Tools.
As John advanced into leadership at Fisher-Rosemount Systems and Emerson, he found that the obstacles, corporate bureaucracy, skepticism, and resistance to new ideas didn’t shrink with seniority. They grew.
What changed was his approach. Early on, the instinct was to push through resistance directly. Over time, he learned that redirection works better. Instead of treating an obstacle as something to overcome and discard, he learned to treat it as something to work with, finding ways to turn its energy toward the outcome he wanted.
Big Companies Can Innovate. They Just Need the Right Leaders.
One assumption John directly challenges is that meaningful innovation is the domain of small, agile companies, and that large organizations are too slow or too bureaucratic to change in any real way.
His career argues against that. Several of the most significant transformations he witnessed happened inside very large, established organizations. The deciding factor wasn’t the size of the company. It was whether leaders inside it were willing to challenge entrenched practices and stay committed through resistance rather than retreating.
Doubt Is Part of the Deal
John is also honest about the emotional side of all this. Self-doubt showed up repeatedly throughout his career, especially when he was stepping into bigger roles or unfamiliar situations.
He doesn’t present this as something he eventually fixed. He presents it as a pattern that simply comes with growth. Doubt and growth travel together. For someone who eventually reached the top of a major global organization, that’s a grounding thing to hear.
The Question That Replaces “Crush It”
If John could leave readers with one new habit, it would be a single question to ask whenever resistance appears: ” How can I turn this giant?
Not defeat it. Not avoid it. Turn it, so that the same force working against you becomes, at least partially, a force working for you.
It’s a small linguistic shift. But according to someone who built an entire career on it, it’s the shift that changes everything else.
One question can change how you lead: how do I turn this giant? John Berra answers it fully in Turning the Giant, available on Amazon now.
