In X-engineering, your aspirations are as important as your
capacity for fixing broken processes. Managers who aspire to a
higher level of business performance ... are well suited for
X-engineering. ... For them, change is relished, not dreaded.
But change does mean that work will be different. ... Technological
changes, such as the Internet, are more threatening to employees
than other kinds of new initiatives. It can be daunting to be
suddenly confronted with the need to learn a whole new set of
skills. Anxiety and opposition escalate when the company actually
moves ahead with X-engineering. And if all this comes on the heels
of an earlier change program, people may feel understandably weary
and cynical. ...
A good manager responds with a strong statement of the case for
change and a heavy dose of inspiration. Eventually, when change is
well executed, an appetite for it develops.
First, Last, and Always: Flawless Execution
I have one [last] piece of management advice that is no less
vital...: Execute flawlessly. When Bud Mathaisel, Solectron's chief
information officer, was asked how Solectron was able to compete
since it gives all its "secrets" away, he said: "Our basis of
competition is execution. We simply do very well what we say we
will do."
Companies such as Solectron, EMC Corporation, ...
Wal-Mart Stores,
GE, and
Cisco Systems aren't secretive about what they are doing.
Wal-Mart doesn't care who knows that it obsesses over its supply
chain; ... [former GE CEO]
Jack Welch lectures publicly on how to
manage. Cisco puts all of its processes on the Internet. What these
companies have in common, beyond generating brilliant ideas, is the
ability to execute nearly perfectly.
From the book
X-Engineering the Corporation: Reinventing Your
Business in the Digital Age by
James Champy. Copyright © 2002
by James Champy. Reprinted by permission of Warner Books, Inc., New
York, NY. All rights reserved.