Reengineering Management

James Champy, in Reengineering Management: The Mandate for New Leadership, studies the turbulent world of modern business in a follow-up work to his 1993 work Reengineering the Corporation. In the previous work, the author presented a broader picture of corporate opportunities for more effective and efficient "operational processes---product development, for example, or order fulfillment." In this new work, Champy focuses on the role of and requirements for management in the reengineering process.

The first chapter addresses questions often raised by readers of his earlier work. One of the purposes of this chapter is to justify another book on the subject of reengineering, and he accomplishes this end effectively. The nature of many of these questions and his own continuing research have led him to bring to reengineering a tighter focus than he established in the first book: "I have become increasingly convinced that the real challenge to changing dramatically how companies operate is with managers, both in how they work and how they think." Management has shown a willingness to implement the steps of reengineering but has not been so willing to include itself in the overhaul process. The shortcomings of reengineering to date are not failures of the ideas of Champy, the author says, but are rather failures of managerial accountability. In addition, the author emphasizes the point that reengineering is a matter of humanizing the company and not merely refining the t

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ired for any manager or firm which hopes to survive and prosper. Therefore, he does not have to inspire his readers lyrically. In the second chapter, for example, the "ordeal of management" is openly acknowledged. His honesty and directness overcome the limitations of his writing style. His simple approach to the reader is the most effective. The successful manager, after all, wants to cut to the muscle of the message. For example, Champy writes that the manager of today, like it or not, is dealing with a far more educated and skeptical customer than was the manager of the past. This change has created a "dictatorship of the customariat" or a "market democracy," which no longer allows the corporation to dictate market realities. The manager who does not reengineer her company to compete for such savvy customers will lose out. The book effectively mixes the theoretical and the practical. For example, saying the customer should be the heart of the corporation is easy, but Champy goes on to argue that the "person in charge" is not the CEO but the person who is dealing directly with the customers, the person who can and will actually help those customers. In "Living the Questions," Champy emphasizes the need for both inte

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