Inside the Game Changers: The Making & Marketing of Business Reengineering

“Why is it so darn hard to make our businesses perform better?” – Dr. Michael Hammer.

I just finished my latest and most ambitious project, a 40-minute documentary on the management concept that dominated the 1980s and 90s: Business Reengineering. It was more than a trend or buzzword. Business reengineering forever changed how organizations thought about their operations, enabling them greater flexibility, efficiency, market reach, and the ability to offer greater value. 

By the mid 1990s, countless Fortune 500 companies had embraced the concept. Newspapers, magazines and publications everywhere covered the latest reengineering stories. The thought leader behind reengineering’s popularity, the late Michael Hammer, became one of TIME Magazine’s 25 Most Influential Americans. And CSC Index, the firm Hammer partnered with to sell reengineering consulting services, earned a revenue of $200 million.

Then by the year 2000, CSC Index closed its doors for good. 

The conception of business reengineering, the genius of Michael Hammer, and the rise and fall of CSC Index all take center stage in this documentary. You’ll hear from the people who were there: members of the research team at Index, people who worked directly with Hammer to push out the concept—contextualized with narration from my father, Bob Buday, who ran survey research and public relations at Index for 10 years. You’ll see where it reengineering was born, as my father and I visit the building where Hammer discovered reengineering. And you’ll learn how business reengineering still influences the thought leadership profession today.

Tackling a documentary this big made for an exciting challenge, one my father and I met with gusto and critical thinking. Michael Hammer’s story and that of reengineering are inseparable. But with Hammer’s tragic death in 2008, we couldn’t ask him for the full picture. Instead, we approached the ones who worked with him: Jim Champy, who co-authored the quintessential book on reengineering; Tom Davenport, Index’s head of research; and three members of the research team responsible for deep and broad case studies on reengineering. Their testimonies combined with narration and hundreds of archival materials helped us tell the full story of business reengineering.

As a two-person team, my father and I wore many hats. He interviewed the guests, provided newspaper clippings; magazine articles; books and other physical media from the time period, and recorded the narration. I found archival materials online, reached out to the Hammer family—drafting a permissions form to show visuals of Michael Hammer on screen, hunted for music, filmed live in Cambridge at the birthplace of reengineering, and edited the project.

I also used AI. Not in the way of generating images from scratch—except for one instance—but improving audiovisual quality and finding archival materials that would have stayed buried somewhere on a database. I used Topaz Video AI to get rid of grain and bring out higher levels of detail in our interviewees’ Zoom recordings, and combined Descript’s Studio Sound feature with tools in Premiere like the parametric equalizer—mitigating harsh frequencies and bringing out a fuller sound.

Four months of careful coordination and fine tuning have gone into this documentary. The story of business reengineering has never been reengineered for this medium. We hope you enjoy it.

It’s out now on YouTube and the Buday TLP website.