Reengineering the Corporation

Pareto, an early-twentieth-century Italian economist, formulated what most of us call the 80–20 rule, technically known as the law of maldistribution. This rule states that 80 percent of the effort expended in a process is caused by only 20 percent of the input

Most businesspeople are not process-oriented; they are focused on tasks, on jobs,

A truly great company is never satisfied with its current performance. A truly great company willingly abandons practices that have long worked well in the hope and expectation of coming up with something better.

Reengineering isn’t about making marginal or incremental improvements but about achieving quantum leaps in performance.

Reengineering is about business reinvention—not business improvement, business enhancement, or business modification.

Radical redesign means getting to the root of things: not making superficial changes or fiddling with what is already in place, but throwing away the old.

Reengineering takes nothing for granted.

Reengineering first determines what a company must do, then how to do it.

Reengineering begins with no assumptions and no givens;

KEY WORD: FUNDAMENTAL
The first key word is fundamental. In doing reengineering, businesspeople must ask the most basic questions about their companies and how they operate: Why do we do what we do? And why do we do it the way we do?