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Managing the Reengineering-Incremental
Improvement Paradox
By Jim Clemmer
"Grant me the patience to continuously improve
some processes, the courage to radically reengineer others, and the wisdom
to know when to do either."
Michael Hammer and James Champy kicked off the reengineering trend
with their bestselling book, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto
for Business Revolution. In the book, they define process reengineering
as "the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes
to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of
performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed...reengineering
isn't about fixing anything...reengineering a company means tossing aside
old systems and starting over...reengineering can't be carried out in
small and cautious steps. It is an all-or-nothing proposition...tradition
counts for nothing. Reengineering is a new beginning."
The call for revolutionary and radical process reengineering soon clashed
with the continuous improvement techniques of the quality movement. This
approach is based on the wide spread use of teams to make incremental
process improvements. Kaizen, or continuous improvement, achieves its
impressive results through "rapid inch up" — adding together
hundreds or thousands of individual and team improvement efforts over
many years. As, Hesiod, the 8th century BC Greek poet pointed out, "If
you add a little to a little and do this often enough, soon it will become
great."
But many quality improvement efforts failed to produce significant results
because they were poorly implemented. So managers jumped on the reengineering
bandwagon. However, choosing between process reengineering or incremental
improvement is about as useful as deciding whether to use only addition
or multiplication. Both are needed. How, when, and where each approach
and combinations of both are used depends on the task to be performed.
Like visions and goals, reengineering and incremental improvement is another
and/also paradox to be managed.
Reengineering |
Incremental Improvement |
• Radical redesign and creation of new processes |
• Continuous improvements to existing processes |
• Broad, organization-wide |
• Single teams or functions |
• Destroy the old and begin fresh |
• Standardize and stabilize existing processes |
• Top down |
• Bottom up |
• Major structural changes force new behaviors |
• Training and culture change drive new behaviors |
• High investment and risk with little room for error |
• Moderate investment and risk by learning as you go |
Both reengineering and incremental improvement provide the
vital process management so critical to balancing technology, management,
and leadership. We've seen organizations provide an exciting Focus and
Context (vision, values, and purpose) that turns everybody on. They've
provided education and training, reward and recognition and pinpointed
their customer/partner performance gaps. But with ineffective processes,
a misaligned structure, and/or weak support systems, their performance
slipped and the improvement effort was unsuccessful.
Passionate leadership is vital. Breakthrough thinking and stretch goals
push people to solve old problems in new, innovative ways. But it's just
so much dissipated energy without disciplined management and effective
technology. The strength and contributions of both these areas depend
on effective process management that balances both reengineering and incremental
improvement.
Jim Clemmer is a bestselling author and internationally
acclaimed keynote speaker, workshop/retreat leader, and management
team developer on leadership, change, customer focus, culture, teams,
and personal growth. During the last 25 years he has delivered over
two thousand customized keynote presentations, workshops, and retreats.
Jim's five international bestselling books include The VIP Strategy,
Firing
on All Cylinders, Pathways
to Performance, Growing
the Distance, and The
Leader's Digest. His web site is www.clemmer.net.
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