For the past 30 years, Delphi chairman Robert “Steve” Miller has been salvaging America’s most troubled companies, from Chrysler to Morrison Knudsen, Aetna to Bethlehem Steel. His first rule: Choosing the right leader spells the difference between a turnaround — and a financial disaster.

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There’s something that makes big machines — sawmills, ships, earth-movers, trucks — irresistible to many of us. Whether they growl, grumble, whine or roar, the engines of industry fill us with excitement and maybe even a sense of importance. Big machines shape the land, bend steel and deliver goods. They also take away the waste and recyclables produced by a dynamic economy.

Yes, I’m talking about garbage trucks. Civilization requires that someone clean up, and for that reason the garbage business is a vitally important and potentially profitable enterprise all over the world. The truth about garbage and our need to handle it properly is obvious, and yet even savvy businesspeople were long willing to leave this enterprise to an almost ad hoc system of local governments and thousands of small operators. In some older cities, we even tolerated the presence of organized crime, in part because so many people thought the job was too dirty to merit their concern. By the 1990s, a handful of multibillion-dollar companies dominated the business, including Waste Management Incorporated. When I was asked to join the board of directors in 1997, I had no idea that this mission would bring me one of the most memorable encounters in my long and varied career. Three months later, I was drafted as interim chairman and CEO upon the abrupt resignation of the prior CEO.

“You have a bloated bureaucracy,” a shareholder explained, “and the right guy to deal with it is Chainsaw Al Dunlap.”

Leader of the Sunbeam appliance company, Dunlap was the CEO of the moment, a master of self-promotion whose recently issued book, Mean Business, was rising on the bestseller list. His main claim to fame was a turnaround job at Scott Paper, where he sold off parts of the business, slashed the workforce and cut costs, allegedly by ignoring maintenance and repair schedules. I dismissed the chainsaw approach because I believed that indiscriminately slashing costs to meet short-term investor goals hurt companies when it came to their long-term prospects in the global economy. There is nothing wrong with efficiency, but it has to be matched by smart management and investment in the kinds of things that prepare you to offer the best goods or services in the future. Dunlap’s “mean business” approach didn’t consider these things. But now, in New York, everyone in the room seemed to think Dunlap was the answer for Waste Management, and as owners they were my bosses.

Before the day was out, Dunlap and I spoke on the phone and agreed to get together on the coming Sunday at his home in Boca Raton. That morning I read his book, discovering a remarkably self-confident fellow — “I’m a superstar in my field” — who graduated from West Point and took a slash-and-burn approach to troubled businesses. He didn’t study problems or innovate. He simply issued orders for drastic cost reductions and asset sales and then made sure they were carried out.

I confess I wasn’t optimistic after reading Dunlap’s book, and the car trip to his home made me even more skeptical. He lived in a community that was so exclusive and protected it reeked of paranoia. You had to be admitted at two guardhouses just to get to his driveway, and that was protected by yet another gate. The house itself was a 6,500-square-foot palace with a Spanish tile roof. Two enormous German shepherds snarled behind the door as I waited for someone to answer the bell.

Al led me on a little tour through the house, which was decorated like a shrine to Chainsaw Al. There were more portraits of him than I could count. As we walked he spoke rather loudly, like someone who is a little hard of hearing, and recited a stream of platitudes, many of which I had already read in his book. In our more formal conversation, conducted over sandwiches, Dunlap said he would be interested in the job at Waste Management and believed he was very nearly finished with Sunbeam, which he was hoping to sell. The ultimate decision would be left to our directors, of course, but before I even got back to the car I knew I wouldn’t recommend him for the job. Al reveled in being called a pinstripe Rambo who tore companies apart. I considered myself a careful rebuilder who saved as many jobs and assets as possible. He worshiped share price. I believed that executives should consider the interests of customers, employees, communities, lenders and others along with shareholders. Quarterly profits are important, but they are not the only measure of a company’s worth, value and potential.

Corporations are, in the end, only as good as the people who run them, and the best ones are open about their management moves, their mistakes, their personal finances and their health. If you don’t practice this kind of honesty, it won’t matter whether the public thinks you’re a genius or a chainsaw-wielding tough guy. The truth always comes out eventually, and you hurt everyone. My final effort to help find a true leader for Waste Management led to a pair of solid candidates. Dave Cote was a hotshot at the best-run corporation in the world, General Electric. Our other candidate was a more rumpled, workaday CEO named Maurice “Maury” Myers of the Yellow Corporation, a big trucking concern, who had also worked at Ford and for several airlines. Myers was down-to-earth and likeable. Once, during our extended deliberations I asked him to be patient, and he said, “Don’t worry about it. I know you’re just keeping me warm while you check out your other options. Call me when you decide.”

Younger than Myers, David Cote was brilliant and polished, and as head of appliances for GE, he knew how to work with union labor, having once been an hourly worker himself. He was intrigued by the challenge at Waste Management, but we sensed that he had reservations about the trash business and moving to Houston. We offered him the job, and he took some time to think about it. Meanwhile, I had a long conversation with my most reliable adviser: my wife, Maggie. When I told her what we were doing, she had to restrain herself from physically shaking some sense into me.

“You’ve got one guy who’s down-to-earth and enthusiastic about the job. He’s worked in airlines and trucking and understands what Waste Management does. The other guy is not in love with the job, and he doesn’t want to go to his next cocktail party and explain that he works for a garbage company. He is never going to be comfortable at Waste Management.”

She was right, and after consulting with the board, I called Cote and withdrew our offer. He was stunned, as if the idea of us turning him down was beyond his comprehension. Maury Myers, on the other hand, was calmly pleased when we offered the post to him. He moved to Houston and dug into the job with both hands.

Most turnaround specialists share certain qualities. Among them are the ability to focus intently in a crisis and a relatively short attention span. Although we can leave it to the experts to determine for certain if this is a kind of attention deficit disorder, the special qualities shared by corporate firefighters do echo the traits of gifted students with ADD. We are easily bored by a routine flight in a cloudless sky but thrilled to take the controls when crosswinds blow and the engines start to fail. Of course, we can’t bring the plane in for a landing if someone bigger and stronger refuses to let go of the controls. Reliance Group Holdings was already in a tailspin when its chairman, CEO and major stockholder, Saul Steinberg, called for help at the end of 1999. An insurance and investment firm, the company was losing more than $1 million per day and faced a $700 million debt load without the resources to pay it. Several years earlier, Steinberg had suffered a stroke and was recovering slowly. He still had a fundamental financial wisdom, but not the stamina to work long hours or focus on details. The future looked bleak.

Steinberg was a charming man who seemed very open about his company’s troubles and very eager to have me come help. But his board said no when I was first offered the job as president at a multimillion-dollar salary. Months later he came back with a more modest offer, which was fine with me — I was interested in the challenge, not making a killing. Even then I had to cool my heels more than an hour outside the boardroom, as the board debated whether I’d be worth it. I assumed I would have real power inside the company since I’d report directly to Steinberg and carry the lofty title of president.

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