Re-engineering into the future An interview between Dr Chira Hongladarom (Thammasat University and Asia Pacific Consultants Ltd.) and Professor Michael Hammer (Author of "Re-engineering") A Special Feature from the Asia Pacific Management Forum The Special Feature is an occasional column from the Asia Pacific Management Forum, the world's leading Web resource on Asian business, management, and marketing development. Special features are announced on the home page and the daily Asia Pacific Management News
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Dr.Chira (DC): As you may know, re-engineering concepts are steadily
taking hold and gaining in popularity in Thailand, but what I'd like to
know is how you view general developments in this region?Prof.Hammer (PH): First, I would say that I am not an expert in international development, but it would seem to me that the ASEAN countries are very well positioned to assume a position of global economic leadership. They have several advantages, one of which is that they are newly industrialised. They are not bound by so much tradition as some of the European countries or Japan, and so they have less to undo. We talk about starting with a clean sheet of paper and in many cases that is what the ASEAN companies are facing. This is a real advantage, and plus they have a work force with many of the characteristics we need in a re-enginerred environment. They are people for whom custom orientation comes quite naturally and who are very comfortable with the idea of teamwork. Meanwhile an improving educational system is giving people the background they need. So I think that countries like Thailand in Asia and others in Latin America such as Mexico and Brazil, are going to become very formidable competitors on the world stage in the next few years because of re-engineering. I expect that they will adopt re- engineering faster than more established economies. DC: What do you expect to achieve during your upcoming visit to Asia? PH: Well, I hope to start people on the right path to re-engineering. If they are going to pursue this course it is very important to go about it the right way. It does not do anybody any good to pursue unsuccessful strategies. It could even harm economic development and give re-engineering a bad name! I want to make sure that if a company is going to do re- engineering they succeed. That is in my interest. DC: I understand that several senior Thai managers have attended your classes in Boston. Would you care to name any of them? PH: Well, there have been many companies from many industries in many countries, but one of the Thai executives I do remember is Khun Banthoon Lamsam from Thai Farmers Bank. DC: Khun Banthoon is implementing re-engineering at his bank, and he is quite well known here as a proponent of these concepts. PH: I am very pleased to hear that. DC: Nevertheless, when we talk about "re-engineering" in Thailand we use the term rather broadly. In some cases almost any organisational reform is labelled with this term, although your definition is quite different. So what advice would you give to help people avoid implementing re-engineering incorrectly? PH: The truth is I cannot prevent it. I have not even been able to prevent it in the USA. Just last week there was a front page article in the Wall Street Journal about how re-engineering was unsuccessful at a company, except that if you examine the facts, it wasn't re-engineering at all. I can't prevent that happening. All I can do is repeat over and over what re-engineering actually is and hope that people will eventually understand. DC: I think that one of the expectations you will encounter during your visit to Thailand is whether re-engineering can be applied to some organizations in the public sector, where changes are seen as being particularly necessary. Would you like to comment? PH: Re-engineering is a principle that can be applied just as effectively to the public sector as to the private sector. Re-engineering is not about profit, but about how we do our work. The public sector does work just like the private sector. Of course there are some distinguishing, issues that have to be dealt with but in the US and Canada we have been some real success in applying the principles of re-engineering to public sector organizations. In most ways the ingredients are the same: re-engineering requires the identification of processes, strong leadership, real measures, and teamwork. Fundamentally it is no different in either case. DC: If I might ask you to backtrack for a minute to your original concept. Did you expect this kind of response when you started writing the book? PH: What surprised me about the re-engineering thing was in 1989 when I gave my first talk on the topic to a management group consisting of the top 40 managers at AT&T. I delivered two talks, one on re-enginerring and one on something else. I thought they would be more interested in the other talk, but in fact re-engineering interested them more. That pattern was repeated on subsequent occasions. Over the next few years I gave hundreds of talks about re-engineering and the response was overwhelming. When I published my first article on re-engineering in the Harvard Business Review the response was also very stong. So I had come to expect a lot of interest when the book was actually published. DC: Did your idea spring from your work as an engineering professor or from your activities as a management consultant? PH: The work built on some thinking I had been doing for many years as an engineering professor, but re-engineering really originally came out of some consulting work I did with a group of companies in the mid- 1980's. I went into the job from the point of view of technology, and then I realised that I was looking at the issue the wrong way. Then I discovered instances of companies that had accidentally re-engineered key processed without really knowing it and identified a common theme. DC: In your lecture you said you don't like to be referred to as a "management guru", and yet anything which improves quality and contributes to customer satisfaction is part of management. PH: I agree. Too many people think management is about personal style. How do I become a better manager? How do I manage this or that person? What I am focusing on is how the leadership designs the organization. DC: How many books have you sold around the world? PH: Well, I'm not sure but between the hard back and the paper back my estimate is about 1.25-1.5 million. We sold hard cover in the US half a million and a quarter million in Japan, and the paperback in the US has sold about a quarter million. So that is a million there, and then considering the 20 other languages they have been published in, that adds up. DC: Are you planning to write another book? PH: I am actually working on two books based on successful case studies of re-engineering. Firstly there's a practical guide to making re- engineering work which I hope will be out soon. Then there's a second book which will come out later next year which is more of a major work about the future of organizations that go through a re-engineering. DC: After your forthcoming lecture in Bangkok, where should companies interested in implementing re-engineering go for help? PH: I have two suggestions which are not contradictory. One is to work with a qualified consulting firm, and the way to be sure they are qualified is to see whether they really know what they are about, and there are a number of good consulting firms with experience in re-engineering. The second alternative is to develop your peoples'own skills in re- engineering which can be done by hiring people with a background in it and also by training people in the techniques of re-engineering, which is what my company does. DC: Should we use international consulting firms? PH: Not necessarily. What they need is experience in the particular area. Right now there are very few consulting firms outside the US which have this. So if a firm has experience they are very likely to have worked in the US. Therefore right now there's probably some value in using an international consulting firm. DC: What happens at the training courses your company offers in Boston? PH: This year we have about 30 courses, so roughly one every couple of weeks. People from all over the world including Thailand attend. We have had quite a few people from Korea. So people get a lot of value out of the courses just by being able to meet with people from many different companies and backgrounds and having a chance to learn from each other as well as the actual course. Throughout the year we have introductory courses, advanced courses, short courses. Long courses: a full schedule. DC: You mentioned yesterday that Japan and Germany have not achieved much success with re-engineering, so do you think US companies will have better competitive advantages in the future? PH: We are saying that US companies today are doing better against their Japanese and German competitors than they were a few years ago and there are several reasons for this of which I believe re-engineering is one. DC: How about the prediction that the US economy is in decline and the Japanese economy is in the ascendant? PH: I don't buy it. I don't think US companies are perfect, but what I tell them is that nght now they should be more worried about Mexico and Thailand than Germany. I think this is where the next wave of competition is coming from. DC: In terms of my own field of specialisation, human resources, I have heard you emphasise the importance of people management in re- engineering. What can human resource professionals do to help ensure successfiil re-engineering? PH: Re-engineering requires that you get serious about treating your people as an asset and not just raw materials. We find that the companies that succeed at re-engineering have a huge increase in their training and education expenditures. They pay a lot of attention to developing their people because the processes are very dependant on the ability of the people who perform them, and the processes are not designed down, they're designed up. DC: Thank you very much PH: My pleasure.
***Transcript of an interview conducted in Brussels between Dr.Chira Hongladarom, Faculty of Economics, Thammasat University and Prof.Michael Hammer, Author of "Re-engineering" More details on Dr Chira can be retrieved from his personal home page. He is chairman of Asia Pacific Consultants, who work with Orient Pacific Century Asian Strategic & Market Research on providing management and organization development programs and market research into Thailand for multinational and Thai companies. For details on how these programs can be customised for you contact either Khun Kanchana (APC Thailand) or Ms Barbara Eu. (OPC)
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