Many redesign efforts do not deliver the step-function improvements in performance that, by rights, they should. The reasons for these shortfalls display a fairly consistent pattern: lack of "hands-on" top management involvement, lack of staying power, and lack of focus. Of these, the third—focus—is both the most important and the most difficult to get right. Striking the right balance is hard. Managers of successful redesign programs have learned how to be moderate in selecting which activities and processes to redesign, but immoderate in their ambitions to improve those that they do select.

The jury is partly in, and the news looks good. Many of the process-focused change programs recently unleashed in corporations around the Triad are delivering notable improvements in cost, time, and quality. In a wide variety of industries, efforts to redesign or re-engineer such core processes as customer service, order fulfillment, or new product development have begun to pay handsome dividends.

But the news is also bad. These benefits have accrued mostly at the individual project level. All too often the sum of these benefits does not add up to anything like the quantum leap in overall corporate performance that managers seek and competition demands.

Redesign programs...