Their book was the main force behind the implementation of this theory. Its focus on delayering the organization has inspired the often referred to terms, downsizing and rightsizing. Reengineering offered a radical approach to productivity improvement. Reengineering takes big risks and has produced so very big failures. Many reengineering projects fail because companies structure them in a way that jeopardizes their success by undercutting the effort required for change.
Companies often look to the wrong manager to facilitate the project.
The manager may be to low in the management chain or looking to retirement or in the process of changing positions. Executives in the organization often make the mistake of delegating the job of reengineering to consultants. The consultant is not a stakeholder in the organization and would be more effective as a facilitator of the process rather than the implementor of the process. Another problem is that, executives many times have a very narrow focus of the benefits to be gained from reengineering. Too often they are looking for short term cost savings or have very narrowly focused technological pursuits.