In the early 1990s, Jim Champy saw the writing on boardroom walls -- companies have to change the way they work if they want to be effective and profitable. No wonder, Champy's book, Reengineering the Corporation, became an immediate best-seller, being translated into 17 languages. Although the Internet didn't exist when Champy wrote this book, he says that the concept of work flowing horizontally inside a corporation and across the boundaries of a corporation hasn't changed.

In his book X-Engineering the  Corporation, Champy argues that companies have to go beyond their walls and think about how their processes, their systems, and their technology can connect across organizational boundaries to customers, suppliers, and partners. He says, "We see much inefficiency in those processes. About 40 cents of every healthcare dollar goes to settling healthcare claims. If you want to reduce that cost, you have to look at the processes between hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies."

According to Champy, the new version of the corporation will have much built-in transparency. He says, "Of course, companies will always have physical walls and various processes they'll own. The Internet has forced companies to become more transparent because of what their constituents expect and what regulations require for disclosure."

Champy says that the new corporation will change the CIO's role, providing a greater opportunity to change how work is done, both inside the corporation, and across its external boundaries. He says, "IT changes what a company does and what type of value it delivers to its customers. The new corporation, however, has to realize that IT is the great enabler of business process change."

Back in the late 1990s, Champy saw the need for the convergence of business and technology to form the overall corporate strategy, especially in companies where IT doesn't form the business's underpinning, such as in financial services or e-commerce. The good news, Champy says, is this convergence has finally happened. He says, "The strategic nature of IT always has been, and always will be, how the technology is used in combination with business processes to create a company's distinctiveness. That's why you have to tailor the IT strategy and the corporate strategy as one. Strategy is about developing distinctiveness in your marketplace by combining technology and how it changes your business. Distinctiveness is the engine that powers your business."

To write his  latest book, Outsmart--How to Do What Your Competitors Can't, Champy embarked on a journey to find out how companies have devised new ways to do things, and what we can learn from them. Using a filter of triple-digit growth, he came up with more than 1,000 companies. He selected nine companies to profile in Outsmart. He says, "Companies, such as Partsearch, that are innovating how to deliver a better customer experience use a combination of high-tech and high-touch. Of course, IT plays a role in this process."

In this podcast, Champy talks how about the new corporation will expand the CIO's role, what the CIO must do to identify and to create corporate innovation, and what a CEO should expect from a CIO.

Bio
James Champy is chairman of Perot Systems Corporation’s consulting practice and is also head of strategy for the company. He directs the company’s team of business and management consultants. Before joining Perot Systems, Champy was chairman and chief executive officer of CSC Index, the management consulting arm of Computer Sciences Corporation. He was one of the original founders of Index, a $200 million consulting practice that CSC acquired in 1988.

Champy co-authored Reengineering the  Corporation, which appeared on the New York Times' best-seller list for  more than a year. His follow-up books include Reengineering Management,  The Arc of Ambition, Fast Forward, X-Engineering the  Corporation, and his latest book, Outsmart-How to Do What Your  Competitors Can't.

Resources
CIO  Insight - Jim Champy on Corporate Darwinism
Forbes  - The Invisible $15 Billion Market
CIO  - Five Things Jim Champy Has Learned About Beating the Competition

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive  Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio  Producer
AlarmMusic.com Production Music  Library for Broadcast, Film, Video & Post Production

In 2005, when Warren Bennis, the author of several best-selling management books and a professor at the University of Southern California, gave a talk at Harvard Business School, he asked the audience how many knew what the blogosphere was. One third of the audience raised their hands to acknowledge their familiarity with the term.

In his latest book, Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor, Bennis takes on the world of social networking and the world of transacting business across virtual borders. His premise is simple: if companies are going to succeed today, they must be as transparent as possible. Whether companies like it or not, blogging is here to stay. Bennis says that the CEO of Starbucks tunes into blogs to learn what employees in the company's 15,000 stores are feeling, thinking about, and doing. He says, "If companies can't handle transparency, then someone else will come out with the news ahead of them, or offend them, or surprise them."

He adds that there has to be enough trust in the organization with people working at distances from one another. He says, "The only way organizations can succeed in building alliances with other companies or having a geographical disperse workforce is to have crystal clear terms of engagement. The need for transparency is going to become more monumental than ever before." In this podcast, Bennis talks about the challenges C-level executives face today in a creating a culture of candor that must co-exist with social networks.

Bio
Warren Bennis is the Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the University of Southern California. He also serves as the chairman of the advisory board of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School and is the Thomas S. Murphy Distinguished Research Fellow at the Harvard Business School. He is Visiting Professor of Leadership at the University of Exeter and a senior fellow at UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research.

He has written or edited 26 books, including the best selling Leaders and On Becoming a Leader, both translated into 21 languages. The Financial Times named Leaders as one of the top 50 business books of all time. His book, An Inverted Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change, wasnominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His most recent books include Geeks & Geezers, Judgment, and Transparency.

Bennis has served on the faculty of MIT's Sloan School of Management where he was chairman of the Organizational Studies Department. He is a former faculty member of Harvard University and Boston University, former provost and executive vice president of State University of New York. He has received 12 honorary degrees and has served on numerous boards of advisers, including the Salk Institute. He has served on four US Presidential Advisory Boards and has consulted for many Fortune 500 companies, including G.E., Ford, and Starbucks.

The Wall Street Journal named him as one of the top ten speakers on management in 1993 and in 1996, Forbes magazine referred to him as the "Dean of Leadership Gurus."

Resources
Slacker Manager - Warren Bennis - Still Valid After All These Years
The Wall Street Journal - Judgment Trumps Experience

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
AlarmMusic.com Production Music Library for Broadcast, Film, Video & Post Production