Product Description

In Search of Excellence set the management programme for the 1980s. Michael Hammer's Reengineering the Corporation set the standard for the 1990s. Now The Agenda does the same for the 2000s: it is the essential handbook for 21st-century business. It's time for business to get serious again. The 90s are over, and so are the ideas that came to the fore at the end of the decade: that the Internet changes everything, that entrepreneurship is the answer, that success is easy. Tough times - that is, normal times - are back. Money is tight, competition is intense and customers are more demanding than ever. The Agenda offers no silver bullets or empty slogans. Its principles are neither theoretical nor abstract: they concentrate on the nuts and bolts of an enterprise that determine how well a company performs. The Agenda offers serious ideas for serious people, concrete guidelines that show managers how to rethink every aspect of a business and reshape it for the imperatives of the customer economy. Any company - large or small, manufacturing or service, high tech or low tech - can apply these principles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #954302 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Suddenly", writes Michael Hammer in the opening to his confidently but aptly named new book, The Agenda, "business is not so easy anymore". Then, like he did a decade ago in his bestselling Reengineering the Corporation, Hammer sets out an ambitious plan for righting where many businesses are going wrong. This time, however, he retreats from the overarching "big idea" promulgated in books like his earlier one to present a system that incorporates nine different ideas geared for an environment where customers really do rule. Hammer unveils these aligned but individual ideas--which relate to process and customer orientation along with measurement, management, connecting via the Net, and eventual positioning as "components of virtually extended enterprises" rather than "self-contained wholes"--and explains why they represent improvements over past procedures, and cites examples of them in practice. (While discussing measurement, for instance, he shows why most companies can't use their carefully compiled statistics for little more than affirming what already happened; he then tells how one firm matched fixed goals in customer retention, employee retention and product distribution with actual performance requirements that could be tracked and changed.) The final two chapters offer specific implementation suggestions, all filtered through the eyes of an engineer who never went to business school and peppers his writing with references to the Grateful Dead and the Jack Palance character inCity Slickers. In all, another provocative and practical tract that surely will attract old fans as well as new believers. --Howard Rothman

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Suddenly", writes Michael Hammer in the opening to his confidently but aptly named new book, The Agenda, "business is not so easy anymore". Then, as he did a decade ago in his bestsellingReengineering the Corporation, Hammer sets out an ambitious plan for righting where many businesses are going wrong. This time, however, he retreats from the overarching "big idea" promulgated in books such as his earlier one to present a system that incorporates nine different ideas geared for an environment where customers really do rule. Hammer unveils these aligned but individual ideas--which relate to process and customer orientation along with measurement, management, connecting via the Net and eventual positioning as "components of virtually extended enterprises" rather than "self-contained wholes"--and explains why they represent improvements over past procedures, citing examples of them in practice. (While discussing measurement, for instance, he shows why most companies can use their carefully compiled statistics for little more than affirming what has already happened; he then tells how one firm matched fixed goals in customer retention, employee retention and product distribution with actual performance requirements that could be tracked and changed.) The final two chapters offer specific implementation suggestions, all filtered through the eyes of an engineer who never went to business school and peppers his writing with references to the Grateful Dead and the Jack Palance character inCity Slickers. In all, another provocative and practical tract that surely will attract old fans as well as new believers. --Howard Rothman

Review
'An impressive list of America's top CEOs has been gushing with praise about the book, and forward thinkers in the software and management business are using it to find direction and insight in this messy, complicated... world.' Infoconomist

Written before the devastating events that occurred in America on 11 September, this book starts with a prescient thought: 'Suddenly, business is not so easy anymore'. And how. Michael Hammer wrote one of the most useful guru-type books of the nineties, Reengineering the Corporation, and is listed by Business Week as one of the four most important business thinkers of the decade. His new book sets out a management agenda to move businesses ahead in times when success is hard to achieve. It is based around nine fundamental action points and approaches. As so often these seem deceptively simple; they include 'Add more value for your customers' and 'Push past your boundaries in pursuit of efficiency'. But it is the detail of the action they suggest that gives such tenets value. Here the implications of the main points are spelt out, making action possible and likely to make a difference, and a solid range of examples are offered. The thinking is sound and the tone of the discussion is accessible. The whole thing reflects practical experience and is based solidly in the real world. It appears at a moment when many organisations are going to need a radical review of what they are doing, and how they are doing it, if they are to survive and prosper in what have become troubled times. If you read only one business book in the next few months, there is a strong case for making this the one. (Kirkus UK)

Customer Reviews

Management Processes Redux
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 suggests 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?

Management Processes Redux
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 suggests 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?