Michael Hammer, consultant and author of “Re-engineering the Corporation”, died recently at the age of 60. Mr. Hammer’s methods often involved mass downsizing as companies re-focused on efficiency and removing layers of management. If this were “The Onion” we’d probably make a snarky remark that Michael Hammer determined that he was no longer a productive asset and decided to re-engineer himself out of existence rather than being a financial burden on the corporations that he served.
All joking aside, Michael Hammer was an important man. At the time that his star was rising in the early 90’s, the US was in recession, and corporations were looking for new ways to restore profitability. His book, “Re-engineering the Corporation”, provided a methodology and a set of buzzwords for corporations and consultants to use as they reviewed operations with an eye towards increasing efficiency.
If you ever saw “Office Space”, then you saw a tongue-in-cheek but not too far off the mark view of the type of work that actually was bred by Mr. Hammer’s thinking. The consultants (The “Two Bobs”) bring in staff and ask them what they actually do all day, focusing on processes that don’t add any value (such as the engineer who describes his day-to-day activities which are clearly of little use, who then gets all flustered and shouts that he is “good with people”) or that are unnecessary management overhead (such as the “hero” of the film who says he has a dozen (?) bosses who each call him out over his failure to complete his TPA report).