There’s a version of leadership advice that treats confidence as a prerequisite. Get certain first, then act. John Berra, former Chairman of Emerson Process Management, doesn’t subscribe to that version, and his book Turning the Giant makes a compelling case for why.
Confidence Isn’t the Starting Line
John is upfront about something a lot of leadership books gloss over. Self-doubt was a constant companion throughout his career, especially at the moments when he was taking on bigger responsibilities or stepping into territory he hadn’t navigated before.
He doesn’t frame this as a flaw he eventually overcame. He frames it as a pattern. Growth and doubt travel together. If you’re feeling uncertain about something new, that’s not necessarily a signal to wait. It might just be what growth feels like from the inside.
That’s a meaningfully different message than “fake it till you make it.” It’s closer to: doubt is part of the process, not evidence that you’re doing it wrong.
Where “Turning the Giant” Actually Started
The metaphor at the center of John’s book has roots in a fairly unremarkable place. Early in his career at Monsanto, he did repetitive engineering work, the kind of job where the same task repeats day after day.
What stuck with him from that period wasn’t the work itself. It was a question that kept surfacing: there has to be a better way. He calls that frustration, properly channeled, and it ended up shaping the trajectory of his entire career, eventually leading him into senior leadership at Fisher-Rosemount Systems and Emerson.
Why “Slaying” Giants Doesn’t Work
The core argument of the book pushes back against a very common instinct: the idea that obstacles exist to be defeated. Corporate bureaucracy, skepticism, competition, these things don’t disappear once you’ve “won” against them. They’re persistent by nature.
John’s alternative is to manage, redirect, and turn these forces into something useful instead of treating them purely as enemies. It’s a subtle distinction, but it changes the entire approach. Instead of asking how to eliminate an obstacle, the more useful question becomes how to work with it.
Size Isn’t the Barrier to Innovation
John also tackles a common assumption directly: that innovation belongs to small, scrappy companies and that large organizations are too slow or bureaucratic to change meaningfully.
His own career says otherwise. Some of the most significant transformations he was part of happened inside very large organizations. What mattered wasn’t the size of the company, but whether its leaders were willing to challenge how things had always been done and stick with that challenge even when the resistance was significant.
The Practical Takeaway
If there’s one thing John hopes readers do differently after finishing the book, it’s this. The next time you hit resistance, don’t default to fighting harder or backing off. Ask instead how that resistance might be turned, redirected toward momentum rather than treated as a dead end.
It’s a small shift. But it’s the shift that, according to John, makes the difference between getting stuck and getting somewhere.
If you’ve ever felt like the obstacles in your way are bigger than your ability to beat them, John Berra wrote this book for you. Turning the Giant is on Amazon now.
