07/ 06/ 2006
by Charles R. McConnell
In recent years, the term "reengineering" has spread throughout business and industry so thoroughly that it's reached buzzword status. As a concept, however, reengineering has been misunderstood and misapplied about as often as it has been properly applied. Reengineering is not the same as "downsizing" or "rightsizing," which have also become buzzwords, although the word has—unfortunately—become entrenched in many minds as a synonym for the same kind of activity. And it is, indeed, a reality that many reengineering efforts, including those done correctly, produce a particular result common with downsizing or rightsizing. The first thought that enters many employees' minds when they hear that their employer will undertake reengineering is: Some of us are going to lose our jobs. To this extent, it's unfortunate that reengineering has become solidly perceived as a means of reducing the work force.
Reengineering is the redesign of processes and the systems, policies or structures that support them. Reengineering means, quite literally, to engineer again, to go back to square one and start over as though nothing were in place, and nothing was known except one critical element—the desired outcome. The purpose of reengineering is usually to improve productivity overall—to achieve the desired outcome in less time, with less effort, at less cost, with improved quality, with greater customer satisfaction or some combination of all of these. Admittedly, successful reengineering often leads to the need for less labor to accomplish the same or an improved outcome.
Rather than resembling downsizing and other such processes, reengineering is much closer in concept to practices that figured prominently in management's vocabulary in years past—practices such as "work simplification" and "methods improvement." Although reengineering and these others methods share the goal of improving the attainment of the desired outcome, one significant difference exists between reengineering and these other practices. Work simplification and methods improvement document the present method and determine what steps in that process can be eliminated or improved. Reengineering ignores the present process and focuses strictly on the desired outcome, essentially working backwards to engineer the most effective means of achieving this goal.
Reengineering often means abandoning obsolete systems, addressing problems with cross-functional or intradepartmental teams, combining jobs, discarding old rules and assumptions, introducing new equipment or technology and, in general, creating new ways of organizing work.
Reengineering often proves to be far more difficult than it first appears, especially for the people closest to the processes being reengineered. In work simplification or methods improvement, people closest to the process are invaluable in analyzing that process. In reengineering, familiarity of a detailed process can present obstacles. It can be extremely difficult for those intimately familiar with a process to take their thinking back to square one and begin anew without the present method unduly influencing them. This is undoubtedly why some companies that have gone heavily into reengineering use outside consultants to assist in new process development; outsiders, unfamiliar with the way the work is presently accomplished, are far less likely to be influenced by present processes. Another approach is to use intradepartmental teams composed mostly of individuals from other departments.
Successful reengineering requires a leadership style that emphasizes participative management, proper delegation and self-directed teams. It also requires considerable sensitivity to employee-relations issues; at the mere mention of reengineering, some employees will conclude that layoffs are imminent.
Since few activities are completely accomplished separate from all others, reengineering must usually cut across departmental and occupational lines. But how well different departments or groups work together is as important as the performance of individual departments or groups. Successful reengineering eliminates much monitoring, checking, waiting, tracking and other unproductive work. Thus, more time exists for doing the real work and doing it more efficiently.
Common barriers to reengineering include cost ("We can't afford the extra activity"), time ("We can't do this and also get our orders out on time") and the perceived risks associated with changing ("This could mess up all of our schedules"). Interested and dedicated management, however, can overcome these obstacles.
The two most common causes of failure of a reengineering effort are the loss of top management's interest and support and the resistance of the workers who must implement the initiatives. Workers who aren't convinced of the need for change or who perceive change as a threat present a significant employee-relations challenge for the manager. Still, if properly sold to the workforce, successful reengineering can enhance both competitiveness and profitability.
