Recommended Readings
These readings provide indepth background on the importance of business process and knowledge-worker productivity from some of the world's leading business experts.
 |
Management Challenges for the 21st Century
Peter F. Drucker
Clark Professor of Social Sciences
Claremont Graduate School
In Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Drucker looks at the
profound social and economic changes occurring today and considers how management--not government or free markets--should orient itself to address these new realities. Instead of offering a futurist set of predictions, Drucker discusses major challenges facing management that are already manifest in today's rapidly changing world. Drucker believes that, just as traditional management was instrumental in increasing productivity for manual work, modern management must be transformed to play a similar part in the increase in the productivity for ``knowledge work,'' the biggest management challenge of the next century.
|
 |
IT Doesn't Matter: Business Processes Do
Howard Smith, Computer Sciences Corporation
Peter Fingar, The Greystone Group
Nicolas Carr concluded that IT is now a commodity and cannot
contribute to sustainable competitive advantage in his article
“IT Doesn’t Matter.” in the May 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review. The subsequent debate has been "heard 'round the world."
Smith & Fingar offer a counter viewpoint: while data-centric, “commodity.” IT indeed does not provide sustainable advantage, forward-thinking companies like GE, Dell, Wal-Mart and others dominate their markets by using IT to enable innovative business processes that free their knowledgeable, creative and innovative people to create sustainable advantage.
|
 |
Business Process Management: the third wave
Howard Smith, Computer Sciences Corporation
Peter Fingar, The Greystone Group
“A business process is the complete and dynamically
coordinated set of collaborative and transactional
activities that deliver value to customers.” This book by business process and IT experts is the first authoritative analysis of how “third-wave” business process management (BPM) changes everything in business. A process-managed enterprise makes agile course corrections, embeds Six Sigma quality, and reduces cumulative costs across the value chain. It pursues strategic initiatives with confidence, including mergers, consolidation, alliances, acquisitions, outsourcing and global expansion. Process management is the only way to achieve these objectives with transparency, management control, and accountability. The book describes a radical, simplifying shift in process thinking and technology, with solid mathematical underpinnings, that transforms today's information systems and reduces the lag between management intent and execution. The authors continually update information and engage in a dialog with readers at the book’s Web site.
|
 |
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Larry Bossidy, Honeywell International
Ram Charan, Charan Associates
Larry Bossidy, CEO of of Honeywell International, Inc., one of the world’s most acclaimed executives, and Ram Charan, President of Charan Associates Inc., advisor to the world's largest and most powerful companies, demonstrate that the ultimate difference between a company and its competitor is, in fact, the ability to execute. Execution is "the missing link between aspirations and results," and as such, making it happen is the business leader's most important job.
The three core processes of every business—leaders with the right behaviors, a culture that rewards execution, and a reliable system for having the right people in the right jobs—need to be in place to manage the three core business processes of people, strategy, and operations. The smooth linking of people and strategy to an operating process that results in the implementation of specific programs and actions and that assigns accountability differentiate one company from the rest.
|
 |
Competing Against Time
George Stalk, Jr. and Thomas M. Hout
Boston Consulting Group, Inc
As a strategic weapon, time is the equivalent of money, productivity, quality, and even innovation. With many detailed examples from companies that have put time-based strategies in place, such as Federal Express, Ford, Milliken, Honda, Deere, Toyota, Sun Microsystems, Wal-Mart, Citicorp, Harley-Davidson, and Mitsubishi, the authors describe exactly how reducing elapsed time can make the critical difference between success and failure. Moreover, the authors show that by refocusing their organizations on responsiveness, companies are discovering that long-held assumptions about the behavior of costs and customers are not true: costs do not increase when lead times are reduced; they decline. Costs do not increase with greater investment in quality; they decrease. Costs do not go up when product variety is increased and response time is decreased; they go down. And, contrary to a commonly held belief that customer demand would only be marginally improved by expanded product choice and better responsiveness, the authors show that the actual result has been an explosion in the demand for the products or services of time-sensitive competitors, in most cases catapulting them into the most profitable segments of their markets.
|
 |
U.S. Productivity Growth, 1995-2000
McKinsey & Co
[From the 2001 Introduction] Questions about whether the U.S. economy is experiencing a brief pause or prolonged stagnation have become increasingly pressing. Both the tragedy of September 11 and recent interest cuts that plunged short-term interest rates to levels last seen in the 1960s have heightened concerns. While we cannot credibly predict how consumer and business demand will hold up in the very short term, we do have good news for the intermediate to longer-term. Most of the increased productivity increases that the U.S. economy enjoyed in the late 90s will endure.
More recently, McKinsey has shown that competition and innovation—in technology as well as in business processes—led to the extraordinary productivity gains of recent years. The role of IT has been to enable, the productivity-enhancing product and process innovations, and facilitate rapid industry-wide diffusion of best practices.
|
 |
Understanding Computers and Cognition
Terry Winograd
Fernando Flores
Understanding Computers and Cognition presents an important and controversial new approach to understanding what computers do and how their functioning is related to human language, thought and action. While it is a book about computers, Understanding Computers and Cognition goes beyond the specific issues of what computers can or can't do. It is a broad-ranging discussion exploring the background of understanding in which the discourse about computers and technology take place.
[Computers and Cognition summarizes the concepts that form the foundation for the Business Interaction Model and ActionWorks]
|
 |
Building Trust In Business, Politics, Relationships, and Life
Robert C. Solomon
Fernando Flores
A philosopher and a CEO offer the first consideration of trust as an emotional skill--how to build, maintain, and restore it.
Nothing can undermine a relationship more completely than lack of trust. In business, politics, marriage, indeed in any significant relationship, trust is the essential precondition upon which all real success depends. But what, precisely, is trust? How can it be achieved and sustained? And, most importantly, how can it be regained once it has been broken?
|
 |
Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, The Future of Professional Services
Ross Dawson
Advanced Human Technologies
"Action Technologies offers professional services providers a powerful web-based system to help develop intimate collaborative relationships with both internal and external clients. Professionals will find it a valuable tool in managing client projects while enhancing trust and satisfaction."
|
|
Print-friendly page
|
 |
| Copyright © 1999-2008 Action Technologies Inc. |
Privacy Policy |
Terms of Use |
| |
| ActionWorks, the Action Technologies business process analysis and redesign methodology, and the Business Interaction Model are protected under US Patents 6,073,109; 6,058,413; 5,734,837; 5,630,069; and 5,208,748 |
|
