The Keys to Reengineering Success

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To succeed at reengineering, follow these guidelines:

1. Always start with the customer and work backwards
2. Move fast
3. Tolerate risk
4. Accept imperfections along the way
5. Don’t stop too soon

In short, reengineering is the opposite of business as usually.

Taking each of the guidelines in turn:

1. Always start with the customer and work backwards
Business processes exist solely for the purpose of creating a satisfied customer–they have no other valid reason to exist. Therefore, reengineering at its very heart means a realignment of the company’s resources towards the goal of meeting the needs of the customer.

From an internal perspctive, the best way to generate enthusiasm for a reengineering program is to set ambitious goals that stretch and challenge the organization. People won’t be motivated to abandon the familiar and adopt the reengineered processes unless they are inspired by the vision of what the company is becoming. Provide that spark of motivation.

2. Mover fast
Reengineering is a dramatic, radical process. It simply cannot be undertaken slowly or deliberately. Reengineering must be achieved quickly and decisively–otherwise the forces of internal resistance (for the way things have historically been done within the company) will overwhelm and impede the process.

Reengineering must be done at speed–the faster the better. Experience has shown there is generally a 12-month window of opportunity for a successful reengineering initiative.

3. Tolerate risk
Change–and therefore progress–always involves risk. Therefore, in undertaking reengineering, the people who are by nature risk-averse will feel disoriented and disfranchised.

Experience has shown probably the only way to offset the fear of change within an organization is to demonstrate dramatically the greatest risk of all comes from sticking with the status quo. If people can be convinced “business as usual” probably means being unemployed very soon, they’ll suddenly develop a voracious appetite for trying something new.

4. Accept imperfections along the way
No reengineering program ever emerges full-blown right out of the box. Reengineering is always an iterative process–where something new is tried and expanded on if it doesn’t. That means there will be partial failures along the way as a normal, expected part of the process.

The key is not to avoid mistakes but to learn from them and move on.

5. Don’t stop too soon
Many organizations suspend reengineering when they see the first sign of success. Others stop at the first hint of a problem. Both actions are equally damaging to the long term success of the organization.

The true breakthroughs always require perseverance and patience.

We believe that reengineering is the only thing that stands between many U.S. corporations–indeed, the U.S. economy–and disaster.

–Michael Hammer & James Champy