From the editor.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey

No one in corporate life can dispute the far-reaching impact of technology on productivity; in fact, news reports in recent months constantly point out that productivity keeps rising even as job rolls are shrinking. Just what the dimensions of those improvements are, and if they are accelerating, will be grist for statisticians and economists for years to come.

James Champy, co-author of the seminal 1994 book, Reengineering the Corporation, has thought long and hard about the nexus between better technology and productivity. In our cover story, he talks about the pluses and minuses of the corporate plunge into high tech, and the potential importance of what he calls "X-engineering," in which "X" represents organizational boundaries, which have become far more permeable.

"We are now at the point where both present and future productivity improvements will come from the redesign of the processes that operate between a company, its customers, suppliers, partners and possibly, its competitors," he writes. "The potential improvements in efficiency and service are extraordinary when cross-organizational thinking is applied to tech-driven process change."

In a companion piece, performance guru Jim Loehr spoke to Managing Editor Ellen M. Heffes about a key issue he says effects personal productivity: workplace disengagement. Very few executives really give companies the energy and the attention that they're capable of, he says, and offers suggestions for improving that energy output.

After months of appearing to have gone dormant, fears of the SARS virus were resurrected briefly in September--a grim reminder for many that the virus' danger hasn't been totally contained. Marsh Inc. executive James Connolly looks in detail at the issues surrounding the SARS outbreak in discussing the precautions and the planning that businesses should consider for potentially...