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Title: The Agenda : What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Decade by MICHAEL HAMMER ISBN: 1-4000-4773-0 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 22 April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.68 (22 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Your business needs an agenda
Comment: 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: 5
Summary: Every business needs an agenda!
Comment: 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: 2
Summary: Prayers for Preserving the Past
Comment: 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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Title: Beyond Reengineering : How the Processed-Centered Organization is Changing Our Work and Our Lives by Michael Hammer ISBN: 0887308805 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 10 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution by Michael Hammer, James Champy ISBN: 0066621127 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 05 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Reengineering Revolution by Michael Hammer ISBN: 0887307361 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 28 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: X-Engineering the Corporation: Reinventing Your Business in the Digital Age by James Champy ISBN: 044667897X Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, Charles Burck ISBN: 0609610570 Publisher: Crown Business Pub. Date: 11 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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