In a MIT Sloan Alumni Magazine article, Nelson Repenning shares the power of Dynamic Work Design and the astounding transformation Sheila Dodge led at the Broad Institute.
Best practices and multilevel organizational charts rule the business world. But in their quest for smart work design, executives typically forget one fact: “In real life, things almost never go as planned,” says MIT Sloan School of Management Distinguished Professor of Systems Dynamics and Organizational Studies Nelson Repenning. His research, instead, has long focused on what happens when employees get bored or frustrated or overwhelmed and deviate from the best-laid plans. Some of the effects he’s documented include skipping steps, hoarding inventory, or otherwise improvising to produce the expected outcome.
