Summary

"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.

Publisher's Weekly Review

In the old-fashioned, task-oriented corporation, closely supervised drones perform isolated functions, slowly and inflexibly. By contrast, in the forward-looking, process-oriented corporation envisaged by bestselling business guru Hammer (Reengineering the Corporation), self-directed, autonomous workers who act like professionals focus on interrelated groups of tasks. Amplifying the message of his previous book, he uses case histories featuring Showtime Networks, GTE Corp., Aetna Life, American Standard, General Electric and other firms to show how companies can make the transition to a process focus. He discusses the impact of reengineering on job definition, remuneration, leadership, planning. No competitive manager can afford to miss this manual, which offers fresh insights into how to detect and zap non-value-adding busywork, how to tap workers' imagination and resourcefulness and how to turn employees from organic robots into entrepreneurial team players. $150,000 ad/promo; author tour. Translation rights: Bob Barnett Agency; U.K. rights: HarperCollins UK. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

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

Library Journal Review

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. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.