America's business problem is that it is entering the twenty-first century with companies designed during the nineteenth century to work well in the twentieth.

Reengineering cannot be entrusted to the semi-competent, the hangers-on with nothing better to do.

Unless companies change these rules, any superficial re-organizations they perform will be no more effective than dusting the furniture in Pompeii.

Reengineering posits a radical new principle: that the design of work must be based not on hierarchical management and the specialization of labor but on end-to-end processes and the creation of value for the customer.

America's business problem is that it is entering the twenty-first century with companies designed during the nineteenth century to work well in the twentieth.

Automating a mess yields an automated mess.

The transitional concept of management is reaching the end of the road.