THE AUTHORS

Geary A. Rummler is a partner in The Rummler-Brache Group (RBG). He received his B.A. degree (1959), his M.BA. degree (1960), and his Ph.D. degree (1971) from the University of Michigan.

Prior to founding RBG, Rummler served as president of the Kepner-Tregoe Strategy Group, specialists in strategic decision making. He co-founded and was president of Praxis Corporation, an innovator in the analysis and improvement of human performance, and cofounded and was director of the University of Michigan's Center for Programmed Learning for Business.

Rummler was a pioneer in the application of instructional and performance technologies to organizations, and he brings this experience to the issue of organization effectiveness. His clients in the private sector have included the sales, service, and manufacturing functions of the aircraft, automobile, steel, food, rubber, office equipment, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, chemical, and petroleum industries, as well as the retail banking and airline industries. He has also worked with such federal agencies as the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, the Office of Housing and Urban Development, the General Accounting Office, and the Department of Transportation. His research and consulting have taken him to Europe, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, China, and Mexico.

Rummler has published a variety of books whose topics range from labor relations to the development of instructional systems, and his articles have appeared in numerous professional and management journals and handbooks. He is coauthor of Training and Development: A Guide for Professionals (1988, with G. S. Odiorne).

A member of the Training Research Forum, Rummler has also served as national president of the National Society for Performance and Instruction, as a member of the research and strategic planning committees of the American Society of Training and Development, and as a member of the editorial board of Training magazine. In 1986, he became the seventh inductee into the Human Resource Development Hall of Fame.

Alan P. Brache is a partner in and president and CEO of The Rummler-Brache Group. During the past seven years, his consulting, training, and writing has focused on Process Improvement and Management, which is a methodology for implementing strategy and resolving critical issues through the identification, documentation, analysis, design, measurement, and continuous improvement of business processes. Much of his recent work has been in the areas of using Process Improvement and Management as a tool for strategy implementation; designing measurement systems; installing infrastructures for continuous improvement; and linking Process Improvement and Management to other efforts, such as Total Quality Management, benchmarking, and ISO 9000.

Prior to joining The Rummler-Brache Group in 1987, Brache spent nine years with Kepner-Tregoe (K-T), a consulting and training company that specializes in strategic and operational problem solving and decision making. While with K-T, he served in a number of positions including vice president of product development and technical director of the strategy group.

Brache has worked with companies in sixteen countries. He regularly addresses national and international associations and conventions.

The Rummler-Brache Group is a research and consulting group specializing in the design and development of organization performance systems for business and governmental organizations, with headquarters in Warren, New Jersey, and operations in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Mexico, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. RBG works with large and medium-sized companies in both the manufacturing and service sectors. Its clients include electronics, banking, telecommunications, office furniture, petrochemical, and consumer products companies. RBG measures the results of a specific project in terms of quality improvement, cost reduction, and/or cycle time reduction. It measures the success of a client relationship not only in terms of project results but also in terms of the degree to which the organization has institutionalized the RBG methodology and has transformed itself into a process-managed company.

RBG provides a technology, a set of tools, an experience base, and facilitation, rather than content expertise in any particular discipline. The methodology has been applied to processes that range from product development, order fulfillment, procurement, and distribution to hiring, patent application, planning, and filling a request for legal services. The approach has also been used to improve industry-specific processes such as mortgage lending and credit card processing in banking, dial-tone provisioning in telecommunications, and trade promotion in consumer products.

RBG believes that, while an outside consultant can provide tools, experience, best practices, and perspective, the changes and the results should be owned by the client organization. To achieve that objective, RBG works through internal teams and supplements its consulting with training that ultimately enables its clients to be self-sufficient.

The Rummler-Brache Group can be reached at:

163 Washington Valley Road, Suite 103

Warren, NJ 07059

Phone: (908) 469-5700

Fax: (908) 469-6525