Donald Kieffer

Professor Nelson Repenning and senior lecturer Donald Kieffer argue that modern management has become too disconnected from the work itself. "You'd be amazed how many executives can't describe how the work actually gets done. It's like trying to fix a car without opening the hood," Kieffer said. "Great leaders don't set expectations and step back. They ask, 'What do you need from me to get there?' Then they go and move those boulders," said Repenning.

Five principles make up "dynamic work design," described in the book "There's Got to Be a Better Way," by professor Nelson P. Repenning and senior lecturer Donald Kieffer.

In this excerpt from their book, "There's Got to Be a Better Way," professor Nelson Repenning and senior lecturer Donald Kieffer wrote: "In our research and in the field with clients over the last 25 years, we have seen several companies attempt to fix everything at once. They make significant investments in their underlying processes, only to abandon them when performance begins to degrade."

The premise of "There's Got To Be A Better Way," by professor Nelson Repenning and senior lecturer Donald Kieffer, is that many of the processes which govern work within organizations are broken. At the heart of the book is a simple instruction to managers: go and see how things actually work. "If you aren't embarrassed by what you find," they wrote, "you probably aren't looking closely enough."