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A corporation...is like a complex computer system, an intricate form of artificial life running on thousands of brains networked together. In that context, a reengineering plan (or any process design) is an algorithm. The computer is the company. The bits are people. The routines are business processes. The operating system is the organization's culture. And you can program corporations as if they are giant multiprocessor computers.

Processes improve fastest when those involved in the improvement effort understand the whole process rather than just their piece of it.

At its heart, reengineering is based on the century-old theory of Frederick Winslow Taylor, that variation is waste. His followers sought to root out variation by routinizing, and if possible automating, core business processes. This approach makes sense when applied to clerical, easily measured work, like insurance claims processing and call-center operations. But this process-oriented approach breaks down in cases where individuals must make decisions based on their own information, judgment, and experience. The inevitable variations lead to tensions that cannot be resolved by re-engineering.