The Agenda

The author of Reengineering the Corporation presents nine core principles critical to contemporary corporate success. Among Hammer’s agenda items: “managing without structure” and “creating order where chaos reigns.”

• Make yourself easy to do business with. Presenting a single face to your customers is just one of six ways to simplify customer interactions.
• Add more value for your customers. Your job is to solve problems, not sell products.
• Obsess about your processes. Don't focus on individual activities; focus on how those activities fit together.
• Turn creative work into process work. Creativity doesn't need chaos; on the contrary, it thrives better in disciplined, coordinated environments.
• Use measurement for improving, not accounting. Don't measure to collect data, but rather to collect clues for performance improvement.
• Loosen up your organizational structure. Dynamic, respected leaders and motivated teams, not command-and-control hierarchies, are needed.
• Sell through, not to, your distribution channels. Too many organizations forget that intermediaries are not their customers. The end user is.
• Push past your boundaries in pursuit of efficiency. Creative collaboration with outside partners is essential.
• Lose your identity in an extended enterprise. Your company is not an isolated entity, but rather an element in a larger system.