MIT Sloan Management Review Article on A New Approach to Designing Work

For years, management thinkers assumed that there were inevitable trade-offs between efficiency and flexibility — and that the right organizational design for each was different. But it’s possible to design an organization’s work in ways that simultaneously offer agility and efficiency — if you know how.

You can hardly pick up a business publication without reading about the ever-increasing pace of change in technologies and markets and the consequent need for more adaptable organizations. Given the imperative of adaptability, it is not surprising that few words have received more attention in recent conversations about management and leadership than “agile.” Organizations ranging from large corporations like General Electric Co. to tiny startups are trying to be both flexible and fast in the ways that they react to new technology and changing market conditions.

About the Author

Nelson P. Repenning is the School of Management Distinguished Professor of System Dynamics and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he currently serves as the associate dean for leadership and special projects and the faculty director of MIT’s Leadership Center.

Don Kieffer is a senior lecturer in operations management at the MIT Sloan School and a founder of ShiftGear Work Design, a consulting firm based in Cambridge.

James Repenning is the managing partner at ShiftGear Work Design.

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