Rating: 
Summary: High Level Stuff - not that deep
Review: A high level review of the combination of recent management theories and then not that convincingly done. Best chapter was on process management. Rest on customers etc. I can read elsewhere from other authors who know more about the subject.
2 Stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Methods are many, principles are few.
Review: As a consultant, I often remind my clients that "Methods are method, principles are few. Methods frequently change, principles rarely do." Mr. Hammer's 9-point agenda is composed of basic principles (talk to the customer, make it easy for customers to buy, focus on processes, etc.). His 9-points have have been taught and recommended by many for years and years. What's new? Mr. Hammer now calls them The Agenda. There is little to argue about in this book other than it's too long on principles, about right on examples and too short on "how to implement them".
Rating: 
Summary: HIGHLY DISAPPOINTING!
Review: As one who has taught business management and been a counsultant and counsellor for over thirty years, I was disappointed with this book. It was the author's "I-know-it-all" attitude more than anything that irked me. There are dozens upon dozens of books in the marketplace on what businesses should do and what they should not do to maximize profits. Some books are excellent, others are not worth the money. While there are some basic management principles that should always be adhered to particularly when it comes to financial and quality control, motivating employees and customer service, each business also has some unique aspects. Business is not a "one shoe fits all" game. Over the years, I have come across far too authors and business owners/executives of companies, both large and small, who feel that just because they know what works for THEIR COMPANY, they ASSUME they know enough to run any business and make it successful. This could not be further from the truth. An owner or C.E.O of a successful hotel chain, for example, will not have sufficient knowledge of the industry to run a transport company. He will have no idea of federal transport law, logistics, dispatch, hub readings, log miles, calculation of drivers' pays, or even what makes the industry tick. The successful hotel chain CEO, without question, knows his business, but it is a myth to think that just because he (or she) knows his own business, he automatically becomes an expert on everyone's business. There are some excellent books in the marketplace on general business principles that are worth their weight in gold, unfortunately, this is not one of them. "The Agenda" contained a lot of mumbo-jumbo and irrelevant chatter that could have been summed up in a lot fewer chapters. Some truly good and highly recommended books are "the Myth of Excellence" by Fred Crawford and Ryan Mathews, "21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader" by John C. Maxwell, and "Think Like an Entrepreneur" by Peter Hupalo.
Rating: 
Summary: A Recipe to Dominate the Decade
Review: Business has changed. Suppliers have lost their dominating position to their customers, who refused to accept inconsistent quality, high margins and non-existent service. Information technology, the mid-wife of the new economy, has equipped customers with the tools to comparison shop and shortened product life cycles. Customers now rule the marketplace. "Suddenly," writes Michael Hammer in the opening to his fourth book, "business is not so easy anymore." He then presents an ambitious nine-point plan to right what many businesses are doing wrong, much as he did a decade ago in his bestselling book, Reengineering the Corporation. Although there is little new in his plan, it is comprehensive and revolutionary for business owners and managers: 1. Run your business for your customers.
2. Add value for your customers by solving problems, not just selling products.
3. Ensure your processes create value for your customers.
4. Creativity thrives in disciplined, coordinated environments.
5. Use data collection to improve, not for accounting.
6. Loosen organizational structures.
7. Remember your distribution channels are not your customer; the end user is.
8. Press your boundaries in pursuit of efficiency.
9. Lose your identity to the extended enterprise. These may not be new ideas. However, the author's detailed case studies provide a reasonable justification for purchasing and reading this book. They are pointed and unique, a road map to improving any business organization.
Rating:
Summary: Business management at its best (or, the Anti-Dilbert)
Review: For those of us who are new to management, missed out on the reenginering and total quality management revolutions of the 90s, and are wondering how new trends like business process management fit into the picture, there could hardly be a better book than this one. Centered on the premise that we have come to a point where the customer really is king, the author derives a set of principles, which start with simple ones that no one could argue with like "be easy to do business with" or "add more value", but then gradually lead to more provocative, less intuitive ones that end up putting over a century of management practice on its head, going so far as showing that the days of the enterprise as a self-contained, independent entity are numbered. On a personal note, having spent the formative years of my professional career on small, software consulting companies during the boom decade of the 90s, I have been as skeptical as people come on new management trends and buzzwords. There was no one better than Dilbert to give voice to my (and many colleagues) cynicism, and this put many of us in a "management can do no right" attitude towards our superiors. But after living through a long economic slump, gaining experience in larger projects in bigger and more established companies participating in mature markets, being anti-management is no longer an appealing or even a responsible position. Most of us have experienced bad management first hand, but have also seen what good management can accomplish and realized that ultimately it's what makes companies great. Afer that experience, this book has made clear to me what those principles of good management are in today's economy, but more than that, it has restored my confidence in it and given sense to what previously seemed to be empty buzzwords. While very well-written, I think this book could be much easier to read and understand if the chapters were broken down into sections instead of having 20 to 30 pages without break or pause, and illustrations and graphs would be very helpful, especially when talking about organizational structures and other abstract concepts. Other than that, this is as good as business books come.
Rating:
Summary: Every business needs an agenda!
Review: Hammer, a well-known management consultant and author of Reengineering the Corporation (1993), has written a new book outlining an agenda for business success in the 21st century. He focuses on nine management themes he developed from his work with leading companies worldwide. Although many of these ideas are not new, they highlight key issues necessary for success in today's business environment. Briefly, the themes center on becoming a customer-focused organization; adding value by providing what customers want; focusing on processes; celebrating--yet managing--creativity by introducing discipline and structure; becoming adept at identifying and measuring key indicators; taking advantage of ambiguity; emphasizing teamwork and collaboration rather than rigid structure; creating coordination and cooperation in the distribution channels and focusing on the end user; finding new ways to collaborate, especially with suppliers and customers; and implementing "virtual integration" by identifying those activities the organization does best and outsourcing the others to achieve maximum efficiency. Not many unique ideas here, but important issues for practitioners and students to consider. Recommended for upper-division undergraduate through professional collections.
Rating:
Summary: Must read for all CEOs but missing Global Content
Review: I always enjoy reading Dr. Hammer's book, from Reengineering to .... to Agenda. I have used them in many Management courses for college students, corporate training and Management Consulting with Global CEOs. I have traveled to 31 countries outside of USA (20 in Europe, 8 in Asia and 3 in N/S America) in the last 10 years. As the world turns 2002: 1. Euro is in 12 countries
2. Japan is sinking
3. China is rising
4. Russia attracts so much investment
5. India is over 1 billion people
.....
all of these issues make excellent NEW AGENDAS. Yet, none of them is covered in this book. Dr. Hammer, please do some travel outside USA and your work will be appreciated. ... Yes, global customer is the ULTIMATE customer.
Rating:
Summary: no real breakthrough, but still very useful
Review: I don't think people can make several breakthough in his life time, and PROCESS is what Hammer is all about, and boy he is good at it. Now come a more mature book, and still he talks a lot about process. It is not a complain, just a statement. I love the book and do a review for local magazine in indonesia. I think it is an important book for all high level management teams to think about. It is not that difficult or specific. It is enjoyable and fun to read. Mostly common sense. Mostly the usual things you will hear from any good adviser. But still, this is an important book, and you still gota read it.
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Summary: Reengineering Redux
Review: In The Agenda Michael Hammer seeks to put "process" issues back on the boardroom table. Recent economic challenges and the hangover from eCommerce clearly have shifted the focus of executives toward cost management and customer service. In this regard, process issues are highly relevant and offer strong value potential. Many things have changed since Dr. Hammer's seminal work "Reengineering the Corporation" came out roughly a decade ago. Most companies now routinely "re-engineer" with the term being a euphemism for layoffs and spending cutbacks. This was never the original promise of re-engineering and The Agenda does little to re-capture the radical reinvention aspects of BPRE. This is a shame as new technologies and the lessons learned from the early 1990's have proven the potential of companies to take a fresh look at what they do and how it creates value. The Agenda is a good book for people who are new to the issues of process and the topic of re-engineering. It covers the basics and provides a fresh look at the technique. For people who have read Hammer's prior re-engineering books and articles the book offers a few tid-bits regarding the role of process owners and the challenges concerning how to deploy a new business process focused strategy. As it has been little more than a decade since the introduction of BPRE, many executives are coming to this material with prior experience. It would have been great if the book contained a serious critique of the first wave of reengineering and how a current approach would be better or different. Unfortunately this was not to be found. This is not to say that the Agenda is a bad book. In fact some pages are quite insightful. It ranks up there, just behind Re-engineering the Corporation, as Hammer's best work. Unfortunately it does seem to recognize how the world has moved on over the last 10 years.
Rating:
Summary: Re-Defining Terms of Engagement for a Perilous Future
Review: In the Preface, Hammer makes a remarkable observation about the impact of a previous book, Reengineering the Corporation: Since its publication, "businesspeople have been deluged with books promising simple recipes for eternal victory. Perhaps part of my atonement for this unintentional transgression has been to write The Agenda." In his newest book, Hammer identifies and illuminates "a set of nine emerging business concepts that underlie how the best companies around are mastering today's turbulent environment." He devotes a separate chapter to each of the nine "Agenda Items." They are: 1. Make yourself easy to do business with you (ETDBW) 2. Add more value for your customers (deliver MVA) 3. Create a process enterprise (make high performance possible) 4. Tame the beast of chaos with the power of process (systematize creativity) 5. Base managing on measuring (make managing part of management, not accounting) Hammer: "The purpose of measuring is not to know how the business is performing but to enable it to perform better....A good measure must be accurate, actually capturing the condition it is supposed to describe. It must be objective, not subject to debate and dispute. It must be comprehensible, easily communicated and understood. It must be inexpensive and convenient to compute. It must be timely -- that is, not requiring a long delay between the occurrence of the condition and the availability of the data." 6. Loosen up your organizational structure (profit from the power of ambiguity) 7. Sell through, not to, your distribution channels (turn distribution chains into distribution communities) 8. Push past your boundaries in pursuit of efficiency (collaborate whenever and wherever you can) 9. Lose your identity in an extended enterprise (integrate virtually, not vertically) At the end of each chapter, Hammer provides a brief but precise summary of recommended guidelines and action steps based on key points. Hammer proposes a full "agenda" of items and relevant issues which, obviously, decision-makers in each organization must modify to accommodate their own organization's specific needs, interests, issues, problems, resources, and opportunities. How to plan and then implement a program once an agenda has been formulated? Hammer responds to this question in Chapter 11. He suggests several strategies for integrating efforts with sharp focus. He explains why it is so important to devote much more attention to "people issues." He offers what he calls a "20/60/20" formula for managing different constituencies differently. He explains why committed executive leadership must constantly be evident. He also shares some ideas about effective communication. And finally, he emphasizes the importance of achieving verifiable improvement throughout each phase of the implementation process. I have learned from my own experience that it is highly desirable to pick the "low hanging fruit" as quickly as possible. In the 12th and final chapter, Hammer shifts his attention to helping the reader to prepare for an uncertain future. In no particular order, he cites seven causes of severe "headaches" which many companies experienced in 1999: The Euro, the Asian economic crisis, major mergers and acquisitions, deregulation, ERP implementation, supply chain integration, and the Internet. He then offers three specific suggestions (create an early warning system, become proficient at responding to change, and create a supportive organizational structure), concluding his book with an especially relevant quotation from the Talmud: "You are not called upon to complete the work, nor are you free to evade it." It is important, indeed imperative to point out (on Hammer's behalf) that none of his "Agenda Items", observations, and suggestions should be considered a "silver bullet" because there is no one grand design, no one technique or single idea (e.g. reengineering) that -- all by itself -- can bring salvation and success. This is an important and especially timely book as organizations throughout the world (regardless of their size or nature) struggle to formulate an "agenda" which is appropriate to their current and imminent circumstances while being able to accommodate whatever may (and may not) happen later. Any such agenda is (literally) a work in progress. Michael Hammer is correct when asserting that no single source can fully assist that difficult process of planning and implementation. My own opinion is that this book should be included among any sources consulted. Indeed, Hammer's guidance is essential.
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