Beyond Reengineering: How the Process-Centered Organization Is Changing Our Work and Our Lives - Hardcover

Hammer, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0887307299 ISBN 13: 9780887307294

Publisher: Harper Business, 1996

Synopsis

"Better than Reengineering. This is an extremely important book. Michael Hammer is growing, learning... and raising (appropriate) hell."-- Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence

"A visionary book.... Dr. Hammer offers a challenging vision of how the total organization could be transformed as a result of process-oriented thinking." -- Donald Soderquist, vice chairman, Wal-Mart

"Hammer has done it again! First, he defined reengineering. Now, he defines the staggering, even radical, implications of the customer-driven process-centered organization on work and management, structure and strategy. Everyone's future will be impacted by such a paradigm shift." -- Stepehn R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

In 1990, Michael Hammer introduced the world to reengineering and set in motion a series of events that has transformed the business world beyond recognition. What began as an effort to improve performance has led to a complete rethinking of all aspects of business, from the jobs that people have to the ways in which companies are structured. In Beyond Reengineering, Hammer offers powerful insights into the consequences of the reengineering revolution and how they are changing our work and our lives.

To succeed -- or even to survive -- in today's global economy, companies must refocus and reorganize themselves around their processes: the end-to-end sequences of tasks that create customer value. This change, so easily described, in fact, marks the end of the Industrial Revolution and of the organizations that were designed for it. The process-centered organization is a complete break with the past. It means the end of narrow jobs, rigid hierarchies, supervisory management, traditional career paths and feudal cultures. It ushers in a world of professionals and coaches, process owners and results-based pay, boundaryless organizations and an institutionalized capacity for change. In this groundbreaking work, Hammer mines the experiences of individuals and organizations that already have made this transition to offer a compelling vision of an imminent future.

Beyond Reengineering provides more than a preview of tomorrow's businesses. It also offers an understanding of what we must all do to prepare ourselves and our children for an economy in which all the familiar rules have been broken. It is required reading for executives and front-line workers, for students and investors, for everyone who wants to be prepared for the new world that is at our doorstep.

About this title

About the Author

Dr. Michael Hammer is the leading exponent of the concept of reengineering. He was named by BusinessWeek as one of the four preeminent management gurus of the 1990s and by Time as one of America's 25 Most Influential Individuals. He lives in Massachusetts.

Reviews

This system has now crashed due to its own weight and overhead. It simply was too inflexible, too error prone, and too costly for the new and dynamic global economy. From its ashes is rising a new kind of business in which workers focus on processes, whole sequences of work, rather than on simple tasks like filling customer orders, for example, or only focusing on scheduling shipments. From this seemingly simple shift flow endless consequences, which Hammer details in Beyond Reengineering.

In the process-centered organization, workers are professionals and not automatons. They have broad, self-managed jobs; they focus on customers, not bosses; managers support them, not control them; and they are paid for results, not for showing up.

Case in point: GTE's Bob Rankin. Instead of just repairing broken customer phones, he now decides which customers to visit and when to do preventive maintenance, repair and even sell add-on services. Customers are delighted. The company's costs are down. And for the first time, Bob feels like he is being treated like an adult.

These changes in the workplace affect each and every one of us, which is why Beyond Reengineering is not just a business book. Rather, it provides an understanding of what we must do to prepare ourselves and our children for an economy in which all of the familiar rules have been broken. The process-centered corporation will have a dramatic impact on our careers, our earning power, and our family lives.

About the Author:

Dr. Michael Hammer is the originator and leading exponent of the concepts of reengineering and process-centering. Heralded by Business Week as one of the four preeminent management thinkers of the 1990s, his first book, Reengineering the Corporation (co-written with James Champy), was a New York Times bestseller for more than 60 weeks. Hammer regularly addresses senior executives of the world's leading companies. His seminars on reengineering are attended by thousands of people annually, and his videotapes educate many thousands more. Before starting his own company, Hammer served for almost ten years as a professor of computer science at MIT and founded several high technology companies.

The problem with being a prophet or even a guru lies in the sequels: once your ideas or philosophies are adapted by the masses, what next? Such is the case with Hammer, whose first book, Reengineering the Corporation, coauthored with James Champy, stormed America's corporate castles and was blamed, in part, for the downsizings that followed. His second book, The Reengineering Revolution, tried to add the phrase "employees as most valuable assets" to company reengineering lexicons. Now, in book number three, he focuses on the process-centered organization and its future in terms of changes in worker and manager status, the definition of a company, and impact on strategic planning and on tomorrow's employees. A basic shift in the concept of reengineering, from "radical redesign" (i.e., "let's throw everything out" ) to "process-centered" ("what combination of tasks comprises this process?" ) is a challenge to contemporary corporate mind-set, forcing a reexamination of the very soul of a company. Barbara Jacobs

Reengineering guru Hammer transcends his earlier blockbuster (with James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation, HarperBusiness, 1993) with a work explaining how a shift to process, as a means of reengineering, will profoundly transform an organization. As companies attempt to reengineer their operations, subtle but powerful forces must be dealt with, and Hammer takes us through them?the impact on the individual, the massive role change of leaders, the new skills necessary to work successfully in this new environment, the interconnectedness with suppliers, the changing nature of long-term careers, and the means by which a company can reassess their key processes. Hammer explains how best to deal with these complexities. But he offers little on applying process in organized companies, which presents peculiar difficulties. In addition, he inappropriately uses the term reengineering when referring to purposefully downsizing a company, and the chapter that relates this idea to a sports team is out of place. Still, titled with the reengineering moniker, this is powerful stuff that will stimulate sales. Suitable for larger public libraries and all academic libraries.?Dale F. Farris, Groves, Tex.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0887307299
• ISBN 13: 9780887307294
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304