MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Breaking Logjams in Knowledge Work

If you work in an organization, you know what it’s like to have too much to do and not enough resources to do it. Digital tools for communication and collaboration are meant to make it all more manageable, but access to technology often can’t fix the root causes: poor work design and entrenched organizational behaviors. The costs of overload are well-documented: It makes people less creative, less productive, more prone to illness, less likely to hit deadlines and goals, and more likely to leave their organizations to work elsewhere. And it’s been implicated in many major accidents and disasters, from BP’s Texas City Refinery explosion to the more recent U.S. Navy ship collisions. But, despite the evidence, many leaders continue to believe that their organizations thrive when overloaded, often both creating pressure and rewarding those who deliver under duress. It’s a popular but pathological approach to management. U.S. manufacturers suffered mightily under this approach for decades, until many found a better way.

About the Author

Sheila Dodge is the general manager of Broad Genomics and an institute scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She is also a partner at ShiftGear Work Design. Don Kieffer is a senior lecturer in operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and founder of ShiftGear Work Design. Nelson P. Repenning is the Distinguished Professor of System Dynamics and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the chief social scientist at ShiftGear Work Design.

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