Rating: 
Summary: Your business needs an agenda
Review: The agenda is the latest book from process guru Michael Hammer. Hammer's others works include Reengineering The Corporation. The Agenda covers a wide range of topics, but has three main focuses: Become customer focused and know your customer
Define, measure, and improve your processes
Processes must extend beyond corporate boundaries to encompass your complete value chain These three main focuses are expanded and covered in the following nine points 1. Make yourself easy to do business with
2. Add more value for your customers
3. Obsess about your process
4. Turn creative work into process work
5. Use measurement for improving not accounting
6. Loosen your organizational structure
7. Sell through, not to, your distribution channels
8. Push past your boundaries in the pursuit of efficiency
9. Lose your identity in a extended enterprise The Agenda is filled with great examples for all for each of the nine points. The Agenda offers a no nonsense view as to what businesses must do to thrive in this decade. The Agenda has a chapter that covers how to begin the extensive changes required to execute on Hammer's agenda and make it your own. The Agenda also addresses the type of organization change core competency that needs to be woven into the thread of Agenda companies. A highly enjoyable and though provoking read. The Agenda is great material for both middle and senior management.
Rating: 
Summary: Management Processes Redux
Review: There's an old saying to the effect that a carpenter sees every problem as a nail. To Dr. Hammer, every opportunity or problem looks like it needs new and better processes. The Agenda is structured as follows: It makes the case that business is "not so easy any more." Then Dr. Hammer describes 9 ways that companies have been and could continue to improve. Become easy to do business with. Make what you provide more valuable to customers. Focus on improving processes. Where you have no processes, make some. Put in processes for all of your innovation. Use measurements to improve processes in ways that help customers. Tear down functional and business unit walls. Look beyond immediate customers to the ultimate end user, and partner with distributors to be more effective. Lower barriers between your company, customers, and suppliers. Do less, and electronically connect yourself with outsourced partners. Think of all this as the left-brained approach to whole brain problems. Then in two final chapters, you are given tools for implementing this agenda. These include watching out for new trends and making your organization more nimble in adapting to new conditions. You are also encouraged to focus your leadership on taking a series of coordinated steps forward in putting these many new processes in place. He predicts it will be "a trying experience." Since this agenda is much more extensive than reeengineering was, that may be an understatement. Most people found reengineering to be pretty trying. Is there a single new idea in the book? I'm not sure I found one. Is any idea explained better than in some other book? I don't think so. As a result, the mini-essays become very short statements of what are book-length problems. As a result, these sections are not enough to guide you. You will need to seek out other books that have more specialized material. For example, you should read the books about the balanced scorecard to really understand the point about measurements. Essentially, what is happening here is that Dr. Hammer first saw that fixing broken processes needed to be done (Reengineering the Corporation). Then, he saw that corporations needed to become process centered to fix lots of processes. So he shifted to talking about organizational development. But if you fixed unimportant processes, you still had a problem. So The Agenda shifts to the idea of picking important processes to build or rebuild. On the other hand, the book's key strength is found a number of detailed examples that I have not read about before in the business press about establishing or improving business processes. As a source of interesting case histories is the only purpose this book serves. Basically, this book calls for becoming the most efficient version of what you are today that you can be. I think that's totally backward based on my research with the most successful CEOs in growing their companies. In the beginning, Dr. Hammer says that success "is not about having the right business model." I parted company with him there, and the gap just kept widening. If Sears had made its business model more and more efficient, would it have outperformed Wal-Mart's business model? Would the most efficient version of American Airlines outperform Southwest Airlines? The other problem with this book is that Dr. Hammer has a very large sense of self importance. Many will find it grating to read his description of his historical importance to world business, and how Professor Drucker's ideas no longer apply. I'm not sure I will read his next book. Inevitably, it will be on how to create processes to tie all individuals, businesses, and governments together to make us all one big enterprise. Why do these books sell so well? I don't know. My guess is that they appeal to all of the engineers out there because the books rely on metaphors that make sense to engineers. I know they appeal to consultants because they create billions of dollars in annual consulting revenues. For companies, these books have over promised what can be accomplished. That makes it possible for the ideas to take hold temporarily until someone catches on. For the financial people, there's always the little wink in the material that says "this is another way to get costs down." To whom can Dr. Hammer point as a sterling example of all the items on the agenda. It looked like no one. So perhaps this is really The Dream. How can you create improved business models that leap past those who need so many new processes to make their obsolete business models work a little better?
Rating: 
Summary: Sermon from the "business pope"
Review: This book reads like a bombastic sermon from Mr. Hammer. There are very few new ideas in this book. Unless someone was living in a cave in Afganistan in the last decade, the so-called ideas in this book have been reported at length in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune or BusinessWeek. Also, I was totally turned off by the condescending writing ...
Rating: 
Summary: Also for sml and med size co's who work with the big boys
Review: This is the most thought provoking book I've ever read. I picked it up because I thought I could learn some new tricks. I had the honor of working with M. Hammer (in a group setting) in the mid-90's while working for a Lrg Pharmaceutical Co in NJ. He helped them to re-engineer their entire global procurement process. It was a very enlightening experience. This time I am looking to integrate his ideas into leading edge B2B Extranet development. As a developer/designer for 8 years, I am looking to re-invent myself with an eye toward better application development process and its use for Large, Medium and Small company integration.
P.S. Keep a notebook handy, some of the most incredible ideas will flood your brain, and there is no way you'll remember them all!
Rating:
Summary: Prayers for Preserving the Past
Review: Unfortunately, I found nothing new in the book. His work with Champy was far better and gave enough treatment on process orientation to make this book superfluous. With this book, he merely provides notions based on his previous works then extended to religious levels. At times, the reading was encumbered by the excessive use of the word "process". I felt like I was reading prayers - prayers to the process gods. After a few chapters of lecturing that bordered on fire and brimstone speeches, I felt like the whole work was tainted with a shrillness. There are a few gems in here. The ones that struck me most seemed to discount the (now aged) process view of organizational theory. This book would have been a five star classic if he would have been more balanced and talked about the great process failures and the limitations inherent to process oriented organizations. I'll sum it up: every manager needs to know Hammer & Champy. To know Hammer and Champy, read Re-engineering the Corporation and Re-engineering Management - read them both. If you find that Process Orientation is the defining strategic management implement for your organization, don't read this book, because it will not challenge your belief. This book tends to justify, justify, justify. If you don't think your organization should become process oriented, read this book: it will give you some food for thought. It was not worth what I paid, but it was worth the time it took to read. I'd wait 'til it reaches your local library. In the mean time, check out "Execution" and "It's the Fast that Eat the Slow".
Rating:
Summary: Prayers for Preserving the Past
Review: Unfortunately, I found nothing new in the book. His work with Champy was far better and gave enough treatment on process orientation to make this book superfluous. With this book, he merely provides notions based on his previous works then extended to religious levels. At times, the reading was encumbered by the excessive use of the word "process". I felt like I was reading prayers - prayers to the process gods. After a few chapters of lecturing that bordered on fire and brimstone speeches, I felt like the whole work was tainted with a shrillness. There are a few gems in here. The ones that struck me most seemed to discount the (now aged) process view of organizational theory. This book would have been a five star classic if he would have been more balanced and talked about the great process failures and the limitations inherent to process oriented organizations. I'll sum it up: every manager needs to know Hammer & Champy. To know Hammer and Champy, read Re-engineering the Corporation and Re-engineering Management - read them both. If you find that Process Orientation is the defining strategic management implement for your organization, don't read this book, because it will not challenge your belief. This book tends to justify, justify, justify. If you don't think your organization should become process oriented, read this book: it will give you some food for thought. It was not worth what I paid, but it was worth the time it took to read. I'd wait 'til it reaches your local library. In the mean time, check out "Execution" and "It's the Fast that Eat the Slow".
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