The Great Transition: Using the Seven Disciplines of Enterprise Engineering To Align People, Technology, and Strategy.

• Author: Rainey, Anthony H.

Exhortations by organizational visionaries have prescribed a sweeping set of changes that will cause "enterprises" to be fundamentally revamped. James Martin's book The Great Transition presents one of the best descriptions of the background, history, and issues that a finance officer should know about the managing these changes in our transition into the 21st century. Though you could acquire books on the various subject matters covered by Martin, it would be much easier to begin with this book, which takes you through a process called enterprise engineering. All of the terms that are typically used as buzzwords in other books are defined and described with real examples. No matter where you are in the change process, or what size your organization is, the book's six parts will fit your needs: change or die, value-stream reinvention, continuous process improvement, procedure redesign, strategic visioning, and enterprise redesign.

The book inductively shows the reader the importance of alignment: align the corporation's goals with the changes in the environment to ensure adaptiveness; align employees with key objectives to build momentum; align all activities, tasks, and performance metrics with the corporate goals to increase effectiveness. Alignment is done through enterprise engineering:

"a family of change methods. Its intent is to identify the most valuable change methods and integrate them. The integrated family of methods is greater than the sum of its parts. It is only when the different approaches are integrated that the extent of the problem becomes clear: Most corporations have the wrong procedures, most computer systems being built today are the wrong systems, most total quality management (TQM) efforts miss their true potential, and most corporations have major learning disabilities."

Martin presents a blueprint for designing, constructing, and maintaining change, the basic tennets of which are listed below.

* Organizational architects work toward an exciting vision that should inspire employees to bring about change.

* Reengineering must be driven by a strategic business vision.

* The organizational architect has an existing set of assets and...