MIT Sloan Management Review Article on The Most Underrated Skill in Management

There are few management skills more powerful than the discipline of clearly articulating the problem you seek to solve before jumping into action.

It’s hard to pick up a current business publication without reading about the imperative to change. The world, this line of argument suggests, is evolving at an ever-faster rate, and organizations that do not adapt will be left behind. Left silent in these arguments is which organizations will drive that change and how they will do it. Academic research suggests that the ability to incorporate new ideas and technologies into existing ways of doing things plays a big role in separating leaders from the rest of the pack,1 and studies clearly show that it is easier to manage a sequence of bite-sized changes than one huge reorganization or change initiative.2 But, while many organizations strive for continuous change and learning, few actually achieve those goals on a regular basis.3 Two of the authors have studied and tried to make change for more than two decades, but it was a frustrating meeting that opened our eyes to one of the keys to leading the pack rather than constantly trying to catch up.

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, as well as chief social scientist at the consulting firm ShiftGear Work Design LLC. Don Kieffer is a senior lecturer in operations management at the MIT Sloan School and managing partner of ShiftGear Work Design. Todd Astor is the medical director of the lung and heart-lung transplant program at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

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