The Agenda

An impressive list of Americas top CEOs has been gushing with praise about the book, and forward thinkers in the software and management business are using it to find direction and insight in this messy, complicated - world. InfoconomistIn Search of Excellence set the management programme for the 1980s. Michael Hammers Reengineering the Corporation set the standard for the 1990s. Now The Agenda does the same for the 2000s: it is the essential handbook for 21st-century business. Its time for business to get serious again. The 90s are over, and so are the ideas that came to the fore at the end of the decade: that the Internet changes everything, that entrepreneurship is the answer, that success is easy. Tough times - that is, normal times - are back. Money is tight, competition is intense and customers are more demanding than ever. The Agenda offers no silver bullets or empty slogans. Its principles are neither theoretical nor abstract: they concentrate on the nuts and bolts of an enterprise that determine how well a company performs. The Agenda offers serious ideas for serious people, concrete guidelines that show managers how to rethink every aspect of a business and reshape it for the imperatives of the customer economy. Any company - large or small, manufacturing or service, high tech or low tech - can apply these principles.