Re: Flapping your wings...

Lou Kates (louk@research.teleride.on.ca)
Wed, 18 Jan 95 7:31:45 EST

Stephen Robbins writes in reference to Hammer's book:
> The one really excellent takeaway I got from the book was the notion
> of explicitly managing a business as a collection of processes,
> rather than as a collection of functions. I haven't yet seen it put
> into practice, however. [It pretty much destroys most of the notions

G.A. Rummler & A.P.Brache's Improving Performance (Jossey-Bass, 1990)
have a 3 level framework consisting of

- organizational level (business strategy)

- process level (as in reference to Hammer's book above)

- individual or job level

Each of the 3 levels should have Goals, be the subject of explicit Design
and be explicitly Managed. They make a good case for examining all 3 levels
although they do say that "we have found the Process Level to be the least
understood and least managed level of performance" of the three. They indicate
that their approach stems from work done by Rummler and others in the sixties
at U of Michigan business school.

Lou Kates, louk@teleride.on.ca