In the right hands, big turnarounds do happen.

There is no template that can be replicated for turning around every troubled company. The experience of all three companies, though, does have one important similarity. In each case the trends that the new chiefs were fighting looked to many smart observers to be largely irreversible. Outsiders took for granted that Dell (DELL) would win the PC wars, that Airbus' two new planes were better than Boeing's one ... and that Fiat was a goner without the Italian government's protection. None of those turned out to be true.

For those looking at the current state of the economy and wondering whether some of the most troubled industries—autos, banks, and newspapers come to mind—can possibly be rebuilt, this is an important point to remember. There will without doubt be more companies, major companies, that fail before the recession is over. Be wary, however, when you hear that the failure of any big company is somehow a foregone conclusion.

Just as bad management can erase billions of dollars of value (think of the $36 billion that Daimler paid for Chrysler), good management can create it, and often more quickly than you'd expect. One difference between the best CEOs and the worst is that the good ones work at a faster pace. Murdering a major company can take many years of painstaking ineptitude. Successfully turning it around takes much more skill but sometimes less time.