Reengineering Management: Mandate for New Leadership, The

Thanks to James Champy and Michael Hammer, reengineering will remembered as the business buzzword of the 1990s. In Reengineering the Corporation, they showed how companies could dramatically improve performance by delegating responsibility and authority throughout the enterprise--to the sales clerk, the shipping manager, the customer-service representative. And, indeed, most companies that took up the banner of reengineering saw dramatic improvements. But not to the degree that Champy thought possible. Unfortunately, management, which made reengineering possible in the first place, was the same group that was limiting its potential. Champy writes:

Anything less than a fundamental revolution in actual management practice, we discovered, is like a communist regime introducing free enterprise into a controlled economy while trying to hold on to power. It can be done for a while, but no one supposes that such an arrangement can last. Something's gotta give, and history shows that it's not going to be free enterprise. It has to be management. If management doesn't change, reengineering will be stopped in its tracks.

In Reengineering Management, Champy discusses the challenges managers face in trying to function in the reengineered workplace. At the heart of the manager's dilemma is the loss of authority and control, which in the new workplace must be delegated. Champy looks at how managers from a wide range of companies, including Federal Express, Frito-Lay, and AT&T, have stepped "out of the boxes on the organizational chart" and wrestled with the hard issues of leadership, values, and culture while at the same time dealing with a marketplace whose only constant is change itself. Wise, well written, and articulate, Reengineering Management is required reading for any manager looking to engineer a revolution of his or her own. --Harry. C. Edwards