Eight years ago it was all about reengineering for Michael Hammer. That was the insight that spurred the management consultant, along with James Champy, to author one of the hottest-selling business books in Reengineering the Corporation and to create one of the major management trends of the last decade. But today, Hammer admits he was wrong.

You can't reengineer your way to the top in the new millennium, he says. Today, it's all about process. Slow-and-steady refinements to fundamental business processes such as product development and filling orders are more important to a business' prosperity than the revolutionary reengineering he advocated in his first book. And the advice to sharpen processes isn't all. Again in contrast to his previous single-minded focus on the cost-cutting benefits inherent in reengineering, Hammer has spread his recommendation out into nine principles he now puts forth for businesses in the post-millennial decade.

One of those primary recommendations is to emphasize the need to be customer-friendly. This is in recognition of the increasingly customer-centric environment that Hammer says has resulted after the past couple of decades of management innovations. Oddly and paradoxically, he abbreviates this with the unwieldy acronym ETDBW (Easy To Do Business With). It's safe to say that it won't become a household word like reengineering did.

Among his other advice is to seek more collaborations with other companies, especially using the Internet. Hammer is a fan of the emerging practice of trying to use Net-based communication techniques to change distribution channels of suppliers and vendors into communities of like-minded companies concentrating on the end user with the goal of reducing costs and improving efficiencies for all.

Measure like you mean it, is Hammer's catchphrase for another of the nine principles. Do this, he says, by making measurement a bigger part of every employees' job, not just managers and quality personnel. And there's more, much more. Hammer advises systematizing creativity by introducing processes designed to spur and organize innovation. He wants to de-structure management by tearing down functional walls that separate units and departments.

In trying to cover more ground than in his previous books, Hammer has spread himself a little thin, but it's a good read. While it probably won't be as influential as Reengineering the Corporation, given Hammer's stature, The Agenda is worth a look.