Jim Champy is recognized throughout the world for his work on leadership and management issues and on organizational change and business reengineering. His first book, Reengineering The Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, sold more than 2,500,000 copies and spent more than a year on The New York Times bestseller list.
According to Champy, Chairman of Perot Systems' Consulting practice, today's management practices aren't keeping pace with technological advances. For contemporary companies, it's now or never when it comes to building business on the platform of information technology. Without a solid strategy, technology can actually harm a company's progress, not help it. In his latest book, X-Engineering Your Corporation, Jim once again provides a clear pathway for business management.
Here's what Naomi Moneypenny (ManyWords) has to say about X Engineering your Corporation:
Want to add the next kicker to your business model? Then seriously consider X-Engineering your Corporation. Champy gives solid examples from both high technology 'giants' such as Dell, Cisco and Solectron and more traditional companies in healthcare, financial services and publishing in a good balance that demonstrate how taking a different perspective on your corporation's processes can deliver real results. Extend your processes out to your customers, your suppliers and even your competition to achieve customer informed value propositions that balance between product/service push and market pull. Operate only those processes which are really core to you as internal 'secrets'. Champy gives advice on how companies can stage their X-engineering efforts and gives guidance on common pitfalls.
This book is a good, fast read, sure to excite any executive's mind who wants to position their company to have a sustained advantage and achieve a new platform from which to have options to grow their business.
About Jim Champy:
Jim Champy's new book, X-Engineering The Corporation Reinventing Your Business in the Digital Age (Warner Books), goes beyond reengineering to show managers how to cross boundaries into the next frontier of business performance. The book demonstrates how cutting-edge businesses can find greater efficiency by using the Internet to break down walls between its customers, suppliers and competitors.
At Perot Systems, Champy provides strategic guidance to the company's team of business and management consultants and plays a pivotal role in furthering the firm's goal to create an approach to services design and delivery unlike any in the industry.
He consults extensively with senior executives of multi-national companies seeking to improve business performance. His approach centers on helping leaders achieve business results through four distinct, yet overlapping areas — business strategy, management and operations, organizational development and change, and information technology.
Prior to joining Perot Systems, Champy was Chairman and CEO of CSC Index, the management consulting arm of Computer Science Corporation. He was one of the original founders of Index, a $200-million consulting practice that was acquired by CSC in 1988. Under Champy, the company's consulting practice grew at a rate of 25 percent a year.
Born and raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Champy entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1959 with the idea of becoming an architect. "I was so intimidated by the brilliant, but subjective, architects at MIT that I switched to civil engineering, which I thought might have more relevance to the family construction business I expected to join," he says. "Making the transition from a small town to MIT was initially difficult. But, by my junior year, I started to do well and was asked to stay on - to go to graduate school and to serve as a teaching assistant and instructor."
Champy earned his BS in 1963 and his MS in Civil Engineering in 1965. Anxious to broaden his education, he attended Boston College Law School, where he became deeply involved in the intellectual life of the school and served on The Law Review as a writer and as an editor of The Annual Review of Massachusetts Law. He received his JD in 1968 and quickly passed the bar exam.
After school, Champy returned to Lawrence to help in the family enterprise — a construction and lumber company where he soon recognized how little he knew about running a business. In that same year, 1969, Tom Gerrity, Champy's roommate from MIT (who recently retired as dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business), had an opportunity to start a company based on the work he was doing toward his Ph.D. His first project was to build an automated investment portfolio management system, and he asked Champy and two other MIT classmates, Fred Luconi and Richard Carpenter, to join him as partners. They started with an initial investment of $370 each and named the company Index Systems.
Champy planned to run the new firm, but the death of his father took him back to Lawrence to wind down the family businesses. In 1974, MIT asked Champy to come back to lecture in civil engineering and architecture, to run its Alumni Fund and Alumni Association, and to be publisher of its magazine, The Technology Review. Eager for some fresh experience, Champy accepted the position and the mandate to revise and improve the alumni operations.
Meanwhile, Index was growing and changing its emphasis from information technology management to management consulting. In 1978, Tom Gerrity asked Champy to rejoin the firm as vice president in charge of managing and building staff and as general counsel. By 1988, Index saw the need to become part of a large company and was acquired by CSC. Soon after the acquisition, Gerrity left to become dean of Wharton and Champy became chairman, leading the firm to international prominence and its growth to $200 million. "At Index, I learned how to grow a business," he says. As chairman of consulting for Perot Systems, Champy now heads the firm's Cambridge, Massachusetts office and lives in Boston.
Champy's wife, Lois, is an architect and has her own architectural firm, Lois Champy Associates, LLC. She is also a trustee of the Massachusetts College of Art. The couple share an interest in modern art and furniture, and a love of travel. They are proud of their son Adam, who excels in both academics and athletics.
Champy is in demand as a speaker around the world. He is often asked by major media to comment on the news of the day and is a frequent guest on television and radio programs. Champy is a member of the MIT Corporation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Board of Trustees, and serves on the Board of Overseers of the Boston College Law School. He is also a member of the Board of Analog Devices, Inc.
THE NEW TENETS OF MANAGEMENT FROM JIMCHAMPY'S X-ENGINEERING THE CORPORATION
Old: See the world as you want it to be.
New: See the world as it truly is.
Today, managers must be brutally honest when they measure performance. X-engineering begins with a fair assessment of where a company stands. With the Internet making a company's performance increasingly visible, honesty is imperative.
Old: Leave information technology to the technologists.
New: Information technology is everyone's job.
Without an understanding of technology or the capacity to consider its potential, managers will be dependent on others for opinions and advice that are essential to their organization's well-being. Managers must make sure all of their partners, too, are proficient with technology and have an infrastructure that will support X-engineering.
Old: Information is power; keep good ideas inside the company.
New: Share good ideas with customers and partners as you search nonstop for better ideas.
X-engineering challenges companies to do more than spread good ideas internally. In a world where information flows freely, managers must contribute to the collective intellect of customers, suppliers and partners.
Old: Exercise authority to gain control.
New: Gain control by relinquishing it.
Traditional managers may be daunted by the prospect of managing in a networked environment - one in which they have no direct authority over many of the people delivering their goods and services. Managers must recognize that authority comes from giving it up.
Old: Manage change as an event and appeal to intellect.
New: Manage change as a campaign and appeal to feelings.
The challenge here is to understand the concerns and even prejudices of the people who will be doing the real work involved in the change. Managers should be very public about what they are doing and sensitive to broadly held beliefs.
Old: A manager's beliefs and values are his or her business.
New: A manager's beliefs and values are everyone's business.
X-engineering demands that ethics and standards operate harmoniously across linked organizations in the same way that processes do. Managers must be sure their company's beliefs and values will work well with those of their partners.
Old: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
New: Relish change.
It's not the strongest or most intelligent that survive, Darwin wrote, but those most responsive to change. A good manager makes a strong case for change and provides a heavy dose of inspiration. When change is well-executed, an appetite for it eventually develops.
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