The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching: 50 Top Executive Coaches Reveal Their Secrets

STRATEGYCOACHING 207

Michael Hammer

Coaching for

Operational Innovation

I

don’t see myself as a coach in the traditional sense of advisory leadership

development. What I’m trying to do is help leaders think about their busi-

ness operations and business processes in a different way. The particular

point of view I bring has two major aspects: operational innovation and pro-

cess management.

Operational innovation is largely terra incognita to executives. In order to

improve performance, most executives think about changing organizational

reporting lines, developing a new strategy, engaging in some kind of financial

transaction, doing a merger or acquisition, or launching a new marketing

campaign. They don’t consider how customer service is delivered, orders are

filled, or products developed. Such issues are simply not on their radar

screen. If anything, this problem has gotten worse in recent years. The back-

ground that most executives have, the way business schools harvest their

MBAs, and the general cultural business milieu that we all operate in has be-

come increasingly narrow. As a result, we’re losing a lot of the perspective

that can inspire operational innovation.

The second aspect of my work relates to process. Process, in my terminol-

ogy, means thinking about work cross-functionally on an end-to-end basis. I

want leaders to think outside the organizational chart and consider the orga-

nization’s work holistically rather than narrowly. Instead of planning the

work of the sales department, or the work of the manufacturing unit, or the

Dr. Michael Hammer is the author of four books, includ-

ing the international best-seller Reengineering the Corpo-

ration,one of the most important business books of the

1990s. His latest book is The Agenda: What Every Busi-

ness Must Do to Dominate the Decade.His articles have

appeared in periodicals from Harvard Business Reviewto

the Economist,and his work has been featured in every

major business publication. An engineer by training,

Dr. Hammer focuses on the operational nuts and bolts of

business; his work is relentlessly pragmatic and immediately relevant. Dr. Ham-

mer was formerly a Professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Insti-

tute of Technology, and he is a founder and director of several high technology

companies. He was named by Time Magazineto its first list of “America’s 25

Most Inf luential Individuals.” He can be reached by telephone at (617) 354-5555

or by e-mail at [email protected].