Clearing Organizational Roadblocks That Keep You From Doing Your Job
MIT Sloan researchers’ new Dynamic Work Design framework identifies and alleviates organizations’ inefficiencies, miscommunications, and backlogs
Cambridge, MA, Aug. 26, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CAMBRIDGE, Mass, August 26, 2025 - Organizations face enormous pressure to adapt to shifting customer expectations, emerging technologies, and new competitive threats. But in a recent research report from Deloitte, employees surveyed across organizational hierarchies said they spent roughly half their day (41%) on work that created no real value for their organization. Likewise, a new study published in MIT Sloan Management Review found that 75% of employees felt overwhelmed at least some of the time due to work intensification: too many tasks, too much red tape, and emotional labor.
“This isn’t a new problem. When leaders and frontline employees are stuck in perpetual crisis mode — constantly reacting and putting out fires — there’s no bandwidth left for the work that really matters,” said Nelson Repenning, professor of system dynamics at MIT Sloan School of Management and faculty director of the MIT Leadership Center. “At a time when business moves at warp speed and demands constant reinvention, it becomes a crisis that suffocates innovation and growth,” he said.
In a new book, There’s Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff in the Way of Real Work, Repenning and co-author Donald C. Kieffer, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan, introduce a new Dynamic Work Design framework based on rigorous research to increase organizational productivity, reduce costs, and eliminate organizational bottlenecks for companies big and small.
Drawing on Repenning’s research in systems dynamics and organization studies and Kieffer’s operations experience, including 15 years at Harley-Davidson where he was vp of operational excellance and gm of the engine plant, the authors blend practical knowledge of workplace realities with deep analyses of organizational behavior.
Their framework builds on five core principles and entails:
Solving the Right Problem: Effective problem-solving underpins an organization’s ability to be nimble and flexible. Defining what's actually wrong–without assumptions about why or how to fix it—needs to come first before jumping into action.
Structuring for Discovery: Workplaces are more adaptable when people understand and know why their role matters and can tell when they fall short of targeted goals. It’s critical for organizations to engage everyone in closing those gaps.
Connecting the Human Chain. Too many meetings and drawn-out processes create information logjams. Effective communication comes from choosing the right places for face-to-face interactions to make sure the flow of work and the flow of decisions is optimized.
Regulating the Flow. Productivity-sapping gridlock brings work to a standstill. Allowing new tasks to enter the system only when there is available capacity will help ensure that work is always moving forward.
Visualizing the Work: A world dominated by spreadsheets and email leaves people blind to where work actually stands. Devising a system that allows everyone to see the status and location of each project will keep teams aligned on progress.
Demonstrating real world impact
Repenning and Kieffer use real-world case studies based on their work with research laboratories, hospitals, oil refineries, corporations and at-risk shelters, among others, to show how organizations can achieve better outcomes when they rethink how work is managed from start to finish with the goal of cutting through the day-to-day chaos holding them back.
For example, the authors collaborated closely with the Broad Institute’s Genomics Platform, where foundational academic research and industry technology development combine in the rapidly changing world of genomics. By applying Reppenning and Kieffer’s Dynamic Work Design framework and improving how they organized their work, Broad researchers reduced the time required to process a genetic sample by more than 80% and increased the productivity of their technology development efforts by approximately three-fold.
“We wrote this book for every leader who knows their team could accomplish so much more if only it wasn’t bogged down in the day-to-day grind," said Kieffer . “These five principles come from decades of our research and hands-on work with real organizations. Our goal is to help leaders rethink and redesign processes to make work work better for everyone.”
Attachment
Casey Bayer MIT Sloan School of Management 914.584.9095 bayerc@mit.edu Patricia Favreau MIT Sloan School of Management 617-595-8533 pfavreau@mit.edu
Legal Disclaimer:
EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
