Reengineering the Corporation Revised Edition : Manifesto for Business Revolution, A
Author: Michael Hammer, James Champy
List Price: $16.95
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ISBN: 0066621127
Publisher: HarperBusiness (05 June, 2001)
Sales Rank: 8,226
Average Customer Rating: 4.17 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Good Summary of the Benefits of Fresh Thinking
This book's subject is the popularized version of the business concept of management process design. Making that concept more accessible is a very useful contribution. The downside of this book is that many people have assumed that it teaches you everything you need to know to do management process design, or to reengineer key processes. That, alas, is not true. If you find the subject of process design or reengineering to be of interest, I suggest that you first read James Champy's excellent book, REEENGINEERING MANAGEMENT. That book is a good template for how to make any beneficial change in an organization, including reengineering. Then, if you want to get fired up to make major changes, use REENGINEERING THE CORPORATION as a way to create passion about the subject for yourself. But do remember, you may not even have all the processes you need, so reengineering is not the only answer. For example, what is the management process that your company uses to improve its stock market valuation? If you are like most, you do not even have an effective process for stock price enhancement. So be sure to see if you have processes where they will do you the most good.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Book review
James Champy and Michael Hammer published a key book in 1990. It is called Reengineering the Corporation. They define reengineering as "fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvement in critical measures of performance". Allowing for the excesses of words such as dramatic improvement and fundamental rethinking - everyone wants to sell a book and get some consulting revenue! - what Champy and Hammer are reminding us is that the human relations movement in management is only one part, and that scientific management still has a role. Frederick W. Taylor, credited as being the originator of scientific management, may be used as a bogey-man to scare children but there was and is sense in what he said. The same goes for Champy and Hammer.
Their view is that any organisation needs to review its processes - indeed the very way that it works - to ensure that what is does is necessary and central to its needs, skills and concerns. Process engineering has a long and respectable history. There are ways to do things that are more effective than others. Processes in organisations do become cumbersome over time and many existing processes in any organisation are probably unnecessary. A UK based organisation, known as B&Q, once had a room set aside next to the CEO's office in which worked the Cut the .... committee. Their job was to review every system, process, report and control in the company to ensure that it was really necessary and really did add value. Systems and processes are like cupboards, basements and lofts. They can contain all sorts of unnecessary junk and garbage and need regular review. (They do not often get it!)
However, Champy and Hammer want to go well beyond the analysis and improvement of business processes. They want organisations to take a completely fresh look at what they want to achieve and how they achieve it. They argue for a blank sheet of paper as the start point. Such an approach would call into question everything that the organisation does now. Despite their critics - and there are very many indeed - most organisations spend too much energy on operations not central to their core activities. Most organisations have too much overhead. Champy and Hammer's fresh look at least motivates an organisation to examine everything and to hold nothing as a given.
Their critics are from the human relations movement side of management thinking. Henry Mintzberg calls reengineering, "just the same old notion that new systems will do the job". The truth may be that the relevance of more or less ml_topi_mngt_hrmv human relations movement and of more or less scientific management is situational. Some companies are more systems than others. In some companies, constant and daily repetition of quality is vital and such companies are like systems. McDonalds is the classic case. Stuart-Kotze has argued that organisations and leadership can have three orientations - Inspiration, People empowerment and System (he calls them task, people and system) - and that the relevance of each depends upon the organisation's situation.
Perhaps the main problem with reengineering has been that it is seized upon by the numbers people and used as a justification for staff reduction. Perhaps also every new idea, or re-statement of an old one as in the case of reengineering, is that they are taken to be the whole truth instead of part of it. New ideas are sold by academics and consultants as the total answer. Reeingineering is one of a series of such total answers from organisation and methods to participative management, to human asset accountancy, to MbO (Management by Objectives), to empowerment and TQM (Total Quality Management), all of which are highly respectable contributions to the art of management but none of which is the only answer.
Rating: 5 out of 5
A management classic
What if you started your company from a blank slate with serving the customer as the end goal?This question is at the heart of Re-engineering the Corporation, a book that started a wave of corporate restructuring. At it's heart, the book offers the reader tools for staggering leaps of improvement (Cut cycle time from a week to 2 hours) by focusing on processes instead of internal organizations. Instead of asking, "How do we improve what we do?" the reader is challenged to ask, "What is absolutely required to serve the customer?"
The book is broken up in sections of theory followed by case studies where re-engineering did meet the lofty goals. There is an evangelical zeal with the book. By nature of it being a manifesto for revolution, the authors are out to inspire in addition to educate. It isn't enough that you understand reengineering, you must go out and do it.
The main criticism of the book comes from the authors own admission that two thirds of reengineering projects fail. If that's the case, does it pay out to begin a project like this? Or are more modest goals really appropriate? How does one avoid a major failure? The length of the book (in the spirit of the content, the book is very concise!) doesn't permit the authors to answer these questions. It's up to the individual manager to best decide how to apply the lessons in the real world.
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