“Observing and performing the process is the best way to develop insight into it. However, the team must be vigilant about avoiding the temptation to overstudy. The goal must be to move quickly to redesign. Before concluding we should comment on another tool that is available to reengineering teams, namely benchmarking. Essentially, benchmarking means looking for the companies that are doing something best and learning how they do it in order to emulate them… Used this way, benchmarking is just a tool for catching up, not for jumping way ahead. Benchmarking can, however, spark ideas in the team—especially if teams use as their benchmarks companies from outside their own industries.”

—  Michael Hammer

Source: Reengineering the Corporation, 1993, p. 132

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Observing and performing the process is the best way to develop insight into it. However, the team must be vigilant abo…" by Michael Hammer?
Michael Hammer photo
Michael Hammer 14
American academic 1948–2008

Related quotes

Jalal Talabani photo

“I must tell you that I am committed, as the president of Iraq, to benchmarks and to do our best to achieve some progress forward for national reconciliation.”

Jalal Talabani (1933–2017) Iraqi politician

Statement made to President George W. Bush — reported in Agence France-Presse staff (May 31, 2007) "Bush sends top aide to Baghdad", Agence France-Presse.

Ernst Jünger photo

“Man's relation to pain changes with every significant shift in fundamental belief. This relation is in no way set; rather, it eludes our knowledge, and yet is the best benchmark by which to discern a race.”

Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) German writer

On Pain (1934)

Mukesh Ambani photo

“Reliance will get listed on wall street because we want to benchmark ourselves with the top 100 companies of the world.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Quoted in page=26
Mukesh Dhirajlal Ambani, Anil Dhirajlal Ambani

Tom Crean (basketball coach) photo

“The game of basketball is one of the greatest teachers of life there is. It teaches you first and foremost to believe in yourself. You must develop physical and mental toughness in order to succeed because there's going to be many disappointments and setbacks along the way. You learn quickly that basketball is a team game. You must be unselfish and accept the role that helps the team the most. Basketball teaches you the importance of setting high standards and never accepting anything other than your best effort.”

Tom Crean (basketball coach) (1966) American college basketball coach

Foreword to Winning Basketball : Techniques and Drills for Playing Better Offensive Basketball (2004) by Ralph L. Pim

“It is time to stop paving the cow paths. Instead of embedding outdated processes in silicon and software, we should obliterate them and start over. We should “reengineer” our businesses: use the power of modern information technology to radically redesign our business processes in order to achieve dramatic improvements in their performance.”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Source: "Reengineering work: don't automate, obliterate," 1990, p. 104

Didier Sornette photo

“Indeed, the frequency of crashes in the Monte Carlo simulations was much smaller than the frequency of crashes in the real data: if one of the most frequently used benchmarks of the industry is incapable of reproducing the observed frequency of crashes, this indeed means that there is something to explain that may require new concepts and methods.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 9, Prediction Of Crashes And Antibubbles, p. 327.

Don Soderquist photo

“Giving people a sense of significance is the best motivation, the best way to get people fired up about their jobs, their company the contributions they can make. Find little ways of impacting people’s self-esteem, and get out of their way. Then watch as they get the job done and do so with an attitude of pride to be part of the team.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company https://books.google.com/books?id=mIxwVLXdyjQC&lpg=PR9&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=Don%20Soderquist&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2005, p. 56.
On Creating Teamwork

Eugene Rotberg photo

“We design performance measures to cover-up error. They are called benchmarks. We make decisions based on: Will we be found out? Discovered? Identified as the wrongdoer? Do we really want to have to explain this stuff to someone who spent his or her life in sales or marketing?”

Eugene Rotberg (1930)

Informal remarks on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Eurobond market." http://www.generotberg.com/speeches/2000s/on-the-occasion-of-the-50th-anniversary-of-the-eurobond-market.html (2013)

“An enterprise architecture can be thought of as a "blueprint" or "picture" which assists in the design of an enterprise. The enterprise architecture must define three things. First, what are the activities that an enterprise performs? Second, how should these activities be performed? And finally, how should the enterprise be constructed? Consequently, the architecture being developed will identify the essential processes performed by a virtual company, how the virtual company and the agile enterprises involved in the virtual company will perform these processes, and include a methodology for the rapid reconfiguration of the virtual enterprise.”

Donald H. Liles (1947) American engineer

William Barnett, Adrien Presley, Mary Johnson, and Donald H. Liles (1994) "An architecture for the virtual enterprise." Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 1994.' Humans, Information and Technology'., 1994 IEEE International Conference on. Vol. 1. IEEE, 1994

Related topics