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

by Michael Hammer

"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 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.

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for my day job.

That being said, you know a book is excellent when you're getting new ideas in the middle of reading it and this one did that in spades.

[Matthew Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

In traditional, task-oriented corporations, closely supervised drones perform isolated functions, at a slow, inflexible pace.

According to Hammer (Reengineering the Corporation), in a forward-looking, process-oriented organization, the employee-as-a-professional acts like a self-manager who is responsible for work that is interdependent.

This book uses case histories to prove the point made in his previous book about transitioning companies from product to process focus. Examples include Showtime Networks, GTE Corp., American Standard, Aetna Life, the state of California, and General Electric. Reengineering has an influence on job definition, remuneration, leadership, and planning.

Managing competitively requires managers to become familiar with this book, which introduces readers to tips on spotting and eliminating non-value-adding busywork, tapping workers' creativity and resourcefulness, and turning employees into entrepreneurial team players.

[Edisom Rogerio A Hott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clássico livro de Michael Hammer. Publicado em 1996. Faz referência à segunda metade da década de oitenta quando grande empresas como a Ford Company, a Texas Instruments, a Taco Bell dentre outras fizeram a reengenharia e melhoraram o seu desempenho, disseminando a ferramenta no meio empresarial. Agora, entende que deve se dar ênfase à gestão dos processos, fazendo as empresas deixarem de ser "tasks-organizations" e passarem a ser "process-organizations".

[Mike Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doesn't claim too much that's wrong, just that the second and third order effects don't ring true at all. Hammer's work has been vindicated in content, but not in reference to him as it's prophet