13: Succeeding At Reengineering
The process of reengineering does not always succeed. The author's "unscientific estimate" is that as many as 70% of firms who undertake a reengineering effort do not get the results they intended, largely because they do not complete a reengineering effort.
Many of them failed to gain or sustain support or enthusiasm and failed ourtight. Others used the term "reengineering" but were doing something else from the start. Still others started with good intentions, but got derailed or misdirected along the way.
The author looks at some of the reasons firms failed to reengineer, as a method of teaching others to recognize the mistakes and avoid them.
Try to fix a process instead of changing it
The easiest way to fail to reengineer is simply not to try to do it, but to use the word "reengineer" to describe changes that leave existing process unchanged. The idea of reengineering has gained great attention for creating significant benefits, and it's only natural that other efforts will be mislabeled in order to generate excitement or support.
Computer technology is often used in this manner - the same processes remain in place but the paperwork is digitized and the tasks are automated. This reduces paperwork and decreases lag from handling physical documents, but does not improve the process. Worse yet, automation often "immortalizes" bad processes because the computer system is expensive and difficult to modify once it has been programmed, making it more difficult to alter the process in the future.
A peculiar problem is that when process automation fails to achieve appreciable results, the answer is more automation: more powerful hardware, more efficient code, the latest and greatest acronyms, etc. are leveraged to make the automation better - when the real inefficiencies are with the process that is being automated.
Reorganization of people often suffers the same problem: the work processes are the same, but the organization and reporting structure of the people who do the tasks changes. In some instances, bringing the people who do various parts of a task into the same department can help to discover inefficiencies and lead to an inspiration to reengineer - but this does not happen automatically.
Whipping employees, or trying to whip up their morale, is yet another band-aid for poor process. The notion is that the process is just fine, but the people need to work harder or faster to gain efficiency, is merely managerial narcissism.
Existing processes, even bad ones, are at least familiar and the organization is comfortable with them. Making minor improvements seems much easier and more sensible than throwing them out and starting from scratch. And for some organizations, incremental improvement is the path of least resistance. But it is not reengineering.
Don't focus on business processes
Aside of projects that don't end up making changes to processes, there are others that don't even focus on the activities of the business. There's a great deal of fashionable nonsense in the business world, and firms that set out to "practice teamwork" and "empower employees" are generally just cheering along with the buzzwords of the day.
Real change focuses on what is being done, and the way it is being done. When a process is changed, employees are given more authority and must work collaboratively with one another - this empowerment and achievement are the results of improved processes.
It doesn't work the other way around. There is no example of a company that started with a desire improving teamwork and ended up transforming the way the firm does business. Such firms are merely attempting to emulate the consequences of reengineering without doing the work to earn it.
Preserve everything except process redesign
A process design cannot be effectively made without other changes within the organization. Changing what a business does means changing what employees do and the authority they have. In essence, it is changing their jobs - which may also mean changing who they work with and who they work for within an organization that is restructured based on processes.
That is to say, if people must stay where they presently are and do what they presently do, what exactly do you think you are changing? This sort of limitation prevents any processes form changing, and leads a firm back to limited efficiency gains.
A company should be aware from the onset that reengineering will reshape the company. If it is not prepared to change the organization chart, it is not prepared to reengineer.
Neglect people's values and beliefs
To gain employee support for a process change, managers must garner acceptance and support. This cannot be done by autocratic command, and attempting to force change on employees will likely lead to mutiny or subversion.
It is especially important to be collaborative rather than adversarial when reengineering the support of vendors, over whom the firm has no formal authority. By involving them in the process, you can collaborate on a solution rather than having to force a change on a reluctant vendor.
Compromising outcomes
Getting major results requires major changes to be made. A critical test for a reengineering effort is the inevitable moment when someone suggests that the vision should be scaled back to make modest changes that can be implemented easily - to seek "quick wins" or "low hanging fruit" instead of tackling a major project.
Where the team caves in to this temptation, it's virtually guaranteed to abandon the reengineering effort in favor of lesser efforts that will make only marginal improvements.
Not only does the small victory of a quick win drain enthusiasm and divert resources from the effort, it also sets up a moving target (trying to change something that is in flux) and drains the enthusiasm of those who will be involved because they have the sense of constant changes and random actions.
Quitting too early
It is not surprising that companies abandon or scale back reengineering efforts at the first sign of a problem. They are already nervous about making changes and latch onto any excuse to declare the effort a failure and go back to familiar routines. Reengineering is also a target for budget-cutting, because the work is already being done (inefficiently and poorly) and the change seems unnecessary.
Selling the change, getting long-term commitments, and engaging leadership that has the stamina and courage to see it through, even if the going gets tough, is necessary to prevent the effort from being scuttled.
Placing constraints or restrictions
A reengineering effort is doomed to fail when management narrowly defines the problem to be solved or limits the scope of the effort. To do so is to prevent the team from discovering the real problem or implementing an effective solution. In fact, this behavior usually suggests that management already has a plan in mind and wants a group to merely endorse it.
The author gives the example of an industrial equipment manufacturer whose customers said that they "hated practically everything about the company except the equipment it made" and they would be very interested in changing suppliers if anyone else offered a product of similar quality. Management, meanwhile was convinced that the company's biggest problem was the cost of order fulfillment - had the team remained focused on what management told them the problem was, they would never have discovered a much more serious issue.
The author suggests that it is not at all uncommon for senior managers to be completely out of touch with customers: they are often focused on financial and operational reports, and see where the money is being spent, and are prone to the assumption that operational efficiency can fix everything. But very often, money is being spent in one place as a result of a problem someplace else, and reducing the expense requires a complete process change rather than an efficiency gain. For that reason, they should be guided to consider a financial leak to be a symptom that needs to be investigated to determine an effective solution.
Using a short-term orientation
One characteristic that can be devastating to long-term efforts, and the long-term success of a business in general, is the preference of short-term results. Where employees and managers are held to strict monthly, quarterly, or yearly quotas, there is little appetite for a process that will take a few years to implement, and concern for the ability to meet short-term goals in the interim.
The author has no answer but that "management's responsibility is to anticipate and overcome such barriers."
(EN: In a more practical sense, selling the long-term benefit is necessary, and short-term demands must be negotiated. There may be a need to reduce the quotas, or provide temporary support, to areas where the star players are being removed from the floor to support the reengineering effort .)
Expecting bottom-up changes
There is the awkward notion that companies are run from the bottom-up, and that managers support and empower frontline employees. This may be an excellent theory for maintaining an operation, and for getting management to heed ideas that bubble up from below - but executing on these ideas, or any other, must be led from the top.
Primarily, the people on the front lines have limited perspective. Their expertise is confined to their functions, and the breadth of their experience is in supporting a specific part of the organization. They may have a sense of how their department and function support the enterprise, but they don't have the view from a high enough angle to have a good sense of the organization as a whole. They are very good at making suggestions for incremental process improvements, but not very good at conceiving process changes outside their areas.
Second, the front-line people do not have broad enough influence within an organization to gain the cooperation of people from multiple areas. While there is a trend toward open communication, there is still the preference to keep people in their places and discourage communication outside of official channels - up through management and back down to another functional area.
Third, management is likewise geared toward present operations. Employees who attempt to do work differently are variances to established protocols and procedures, and signal that something has gone wrong or soon will. As such, mangers seek to preserve the existing ways of doing things, and squelch any change as being deviations from an efficient operation.
Assign unqualified or uninformed leadership
It's been said that a senior manager is necessary for successful reengineering - but if he is not aware of what reengineering entails, his seniority and authority work to undermine the effort rather than support it, and he can lead it in the wrong direction.
As such, it's not sufficient just to be a senior manager - to lead the effort, he must also understand processes and the entire value chain, and understand the nature of reengineering.
Insufficient resources
You get out of something what you put into it. Insufficient or incompetent resources led by disinterested and uninvolved management will ensure the project does not achieve success.
Reengineering efforts are often seen as a sideline or distraction from the daily operations of the firm, and as such companies are often unwilling to devote sufficient resources to the task. In some instances, participants are expected to support the effort while continuing to perform their regular duties, which take precedence. In the worst of cases, line managers see reengineering projects as opportunities to hand off unproductive and incompetent employees.
The same is true for all persons involved in a reengineering effort: leaders and executives people don't have to do the work themselves, but must be accountable for the success of the effort, or at least interested in achieving outcomes that will affect their area of responsibility. They can delegate some of their tasks, so long as it does not abdicate their role in the effort.
Do too many projects
It's necessary to focus reengineering on a small number of processes at a given time. Where an organization is too ambitious, and attempts to reengineer many processes simultaneously, the result is disorganization and disorientation. People lose focus on the goals, and the projects run into one another.
Even if the desire is to radically remake the company, one project of sufficient scope has the potential to do so, and it's better to do a few at a time rather than tackle all at once. The author doesn't suggest it is impossible, but indicates it requires "exceptional management capacity" to place time and energy on a multitude of efforts.
(EN: The author lists a number of additional reasons reengineering fails, but there's little value to be had. Some of it restates what's been said, others are generalizations that border on ranting.)