Building a 30-year legacy

In 1990, Michael Hammer, a former professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published a game-changing article “Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Eliminate” in Harvard Business Review. His thesis was both radical and conscientious: companies should eliminate work and processes that do not create value, rather than simply automating inefficiencies with technology.

Put differently, Hammer wanted leaders to stop focusing on doing the wrong things better—even with the use of technology—and start focusing on the right thing—accelerating the creation of value for customers. Technology, rather than embedding bad habits, should be deployed selectively and strategically to help create value. His book on the subject, Corporate Reengineering: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, It was later hailed as one of the 25 most influential management books by Time magazine and influenced leading time management theorists such as Peter Drucker and Tom Peter. By 1993, 60% of Fortune 500 companies were said to have engaged in business process engineering (BPR) initiatives.

Review of essential components of BPR

You might wonder what a 30-year-old management theory has to do with what’s happening in today’s AI world. My answer: A lot.

Hammer’s BPR framework rested on three pillars:

1. Fundamental review and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in cost, quality, service and speed.
2. Envisioning new work strategies, designing processes from the ground up and managing complex technological and organizational changes.
3. Using disruptive technologies to challenge traditional approaches to work.

I would suggest that 30 years later, these pillars resonate in the context of generative AI, large language models (LLM) and AI-driven agents, as they collectively help organizations of all shapes and sizes deliver customer value in ways they have never before imagined. These technologies have the potential to achieve what Hammer and his contemporaries envisioned—on an even greater scale. This isn’t just theoretical, as a recent article by Rakesh Gohel outlines three different automation approaches for improving corporate, customer and employee performance.

In fact, McKinsey estimates that Gen AI could enable the automation of up to 70 percent of business processes by 2030, adding trillions of dollars in value to the global economy. Further, based on the blistering pace of near-daily releases of new AI offerings, it is clear that Gen AI is poised to explode as BPR did and trigger a second wave of business process regeneration that will reshape fundamentally organizations inside and outside.

But like BPR in the 1990s, harnessing the potential of AI is not about rushing to automate everything. It’s about rethinking how value is created and delivered—and doing so thoughtfully, strategically, and sustainably.

The big questions leaders need to ask

At first glance, the questions organizations should be asking to begin this journey seem deceptively simple:

• What is your AI strategy?
• Where will you start with AI?
• How big will your investment be?

While these questions may seem basic, grappling with them reveals a cascade of deeper, more complex considerations. For example, asking about an AI strategy isn’t just about defining a technology roadmap—it’s about reevaluating your organization’s core mission and its approach to creating customer value. Similarly, determining where to start involves identifying not only low-hanging fruit, but also long-term opportunities that align with your strategic objectives. And when it comes to investment, it’s not just about dollars—it’s about investing in the skills, culture and infrastructure that will enable sustainable success.

Applying BPR principles to AI

Hammer’s BPR principles provide a useful framework for navigating this complexity. Here’s how organizations can apply them to their AI journeys:

• Review your organization’s purpose and processes.

To take full advantage of AI, leaders must think beyond incremental improvements and embrace radical change. This starts with reimagining a company as a native AI company—starting with why they exist, what they do to deliver customer value, and how their products and services deliver that value. Building a truly indigenous AI company requires reimagining and redesigning all core business processes using today’s generative capabilities.

This is more than adopting technology, it is a fundamental shift that can fundamentally change the face and nature of a company. For example, AI can allow a company to shift from selling products to delivering results or insights. This shift may require redesigning supply chains, retraining employees, and redefining customer relationships.

When dealing with AI adoption, it’s essential to start with manageable, high-impact use cases. Hammer’s emphasis on targeted, impactful change holds true today. Executives must identify areas where AI can deliver quick wins—whether it’s automating repetitive tasks in finance, optimizing marketing campaigns, or improving customer service with AI agents.

Given that you can’t do everything at once, determine which part of your organization will benefit most from one of three strategies—deploying simple automations, integrating AI into the workflow, or deploying AI agents to work together with human employees. Each of these alternative approaches offers different opportunities to learn, iterate, and build momentum toward an end goal of a broader transformation, not just by making the process cheaper and faster.

• Build AI competency across your organization.

Adopting AI at scale isn’t just a technical challenge—it’s a cultural one. Hammer recognized that the human and organizational dimensions are essential to successful change. For AI initiatives to succeed, employees at all levels must understand, embrace and feel confident using these technologies.

This means investing in education and training, fostering a culture of experimentation and addressing fears of job displacement. Employees should see AI not as a threat, but as a tool that empowers them to focus on higher-value tasks and creative problem solving. As Marcel Proust famously said, “The true voyage of discovery consists in seeking new landscapes, but having new eyes.” True to this quote, leaders must foster a culture where AI is seen through the lens of abundance and improvement.

A new era of business process reengineering

Hammer’s call to “Disappear, Not Automate” feels even more urgent today. AI is poised to reshape industries in ways that were unimaginable 30 years ago. But the way forward requires more than technology; It requires leadership, vision and a willingness to challenge the status quo using AI.

For companies and their leaders who missed the BPR wave in the 1990s, this moment represents a second chance. The opportunities that AI presents—to drive growth, improve efficiency, and deliver new customer soyrces, ER value—are unparalleled. But such are the challenges. Success will require leaders to revisit Hammer’s insights and adapt them for a new era of AI-driven regeneration.

Now is the time to reimagine, regenerate and recreate. Don’t wait another 30 years.