There’s Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work (Hardcover)

A groundbreaking method for clearing the organizationalroadblocks that keep you from doing your job and delivering results

The chaos of everyday business forces people into anexhausting, ineffective, seemingly never-ending cycle of work-arounds,firefighting, and Whac-a-Mole. The irritatingly urgent crowds out the lastinglyimportant.

There has to be a better way.

And there is: the game-changing discipline of dynamic workdesign improves productivity, reduces costs, and increases efficiency, ensuringthat all parts of a company can work in concert. It has been used inorganizations around the world to close the gap between results promised andresults delivered.

The five principles of dynamic work design–solve the rightproblem, structure for discovery, connect the human chain, regulate the flow,visualize the work–have yielded breakthrough results in settings ranging frombiotech labs and hospitals to oil refineries, homeless shelters, and casinos.

Large-scale change initiatives, reorganizations, andproductivity programs rarely improve productivity, are expensive, and alwaysadd a lot of busy work.There’s Got to Be a Better Wayis anantidote, enabling you to rethink basic beliefs about your tasks, changing theway you see and think about the flow of work in your organization, and allowingyou to redesign your work to boost productivity and profit.

About the Author

Nelson P. Repenningis the School of ManagementDistinguished Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is currentlythe director of MIT’s Leadership Center and was recently recognized byPoets& Quantsas one of the world’s top executive MBA instructors. Hisscholarly work has appeared inManagement Science,OrganizationScience,Administrative Science Quarterly,the Academyof Management Review,Strategic Management Journal, andResearchin Organizational Behavior.

Donald C. Kiefferis a senior lecturer inoperations management at MIT Sloan and founder of ShiftGear Work Design. He isan operations executive who started his career after high school running metalcutting machines in factories. Later, during his fifteen-year tenure atHarley-Davidson, he led the Twin Cam engine development project, was a generalmanager of Harley’s engine manufacturing, and served as vice president ofoperational excellence for the company.