Michael Hammer and Reengineering

Michael Hammer , the co-author (with Jim Champy) and leader in reengineering died Thursday 9/4/08 at age 60. Many saw their approach as a “silver bullet.” I, on the other hand, saw that it was necessary and achievable with hard work (what many try to avoid). The book “Reengineering the Corporation” is the basis philosophy of my consulting. After the hard effort, it does uncover opportunities to strengthen the corporation by putting the customer first. The approach stressed the streamlining and sharing of data and processes.

The NYTimes picked a great quote from the book:

“Managers have to switch from supervisory roles to acting as facilitators, as enablers, and as people whose jobs are the development of people and their skills so that those people will be able to perform value-adding processes themselves,” the book said. At the same time, it said, “those empowered to make the changes at lower levels must know they have the support of top management, or change won’t occur.”

As I said in my IT-focused blog … it’s not a miracle…it’s a commitment each person in the chain makes to themselves, the corporation, and the customer.

800-CEO-Read Blog posted today:

If the book of the 80’s was In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman, then book of the 90’s was Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and Jim Champy.

To read the rest of their post: http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/008428.html

 One of the blogs I read regularly (BloggingStocks.com) had this to say:

Like many management ideas, its period of wild popularity lasted a few years and then faded. But what has stayed with me about the concept of Reengineering is the notion that a business needs to work not to satisfy the needs of its internal fiefdoms, but to make life better for its customers. And that is a legacy of which Hammer might be proud.

Read the full post: http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/09/05/reengineering-guru-dies/

Reengineering still is the basis of my consulting today (though now it goes by different names). I follow the basic techniques no matter which industry (and I’ve participated in many). The fiefdoms still exist in business and in IT structures such as applications and data organization. Sharing of information is still difficult because of the data/information owner (both business and IT). 

Take a look at yourself, are you putting the customer first (and thus profit)…or are you worrying about your own internal world?  Now, take a look at your IT group.  Can IT say they are putting you and the final customer first (and thus profit)…or they worrying about their job being outsourced and not sharing information with other IT departments!