THEORY 9

MICHAEL HAMMER ON BUSINESS PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING (BPR)

Use to remind you of the value of undertaking a root and branch evaluation of the organisation’s working practices.

Business process re-engineering (BPR) is an approach that seeks to redesign processes and practices in order to support the organisation’s mission, reduce costs and improve efficiency. It is a complex and organisation-wide process and only two crucial elements of it can be explored in this short entry: the importance of selecting the right people for the implementation team and an overview of the process to be followed.

In his seminal article Re-engineering Work: Don’t Automate Obliterate, Michael Hammer, a professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT), argued that most work undertaken in an organisation adds nothing in terms of value to the service or product that the customer receives and should be eliminated. Unfortunately, Hammer noted that very often such unproductive practices were the first to be automated and so became entrenched in the organisation’s work procedures. To challenge and undo them requires BPR.

WHAT TO DO

  • Stage one in any BPR project requires you/senior managers to recognise that BPR is about fundamentally changing how your organisation works. Such a change can only be successful if it has organisation-wide support. Managers, leaders and supervisors at all levels must constantly demonstrate their commitment to the project. It is they who have to sell the vision and allay the fears of staff. They can only do this by communicating with all employees and stakeholders affected in a language they can understand (see Theories 55 and 60).
  • Stage two requires senior management to form an implementation team that commands widespread respect in the organisation. Members of the team should be drawn from a cross-section of the organisation and include senior, middle and junior managers plus staff from the departments affected by the review, and representatives from the IT department, finance and customer/user groups. Remember, the best people may not always be the most senior. Team supervisors or junior managers who staff trust and look to for advice and guidance are often the most valuable people to have on board.
  • Although you must include people who are familiar with the processes under review, always find room for at least one person who knows nothing about them: someone who isn’t afraid to challenge received wisdom and to ‘ask the dumb question’ that provokes new ways of thinking.
  • It’s essential that the people selected are able to consider issues in the round and like Handy’s helicopter (see Theory 11) be able to rise above their own parochial priorities and see problems and solutions in organisation-wide terms.
  • Keep the size of team below 12. More than that and the management of the project becomes problematic. The purpose of the team and the project manager is to deliver change in the form of competitive advantage and economic and efficiency gains. You don’t want it to become bogged down with internal management issues.
  • Once the team has been formed and its terms of reference and lines of reporting clearly established, work on the project can start. Use the four-stage process to identify and bring about the changes required.
Illustration
  • If the results achieved are disappointing, repeat the process until real improvements are achieved. Only then move on to the next process.
  • Review Section 5 on team management to gain insights into how you can manage, motivate and support small teams.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

  • Has your organisation ever undertaken a BPR exercise? Does it need to?
  • What skills could you bring to a BPR exercise?
..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset