There's Got to Be a Better Way

1. The Firefighting Trap: Why Organizations Get Stuck in Endless Chaos

Well-intentioned efforts to “just get things done” can mire an organization in a vicious cycle of workarounds, production pressure, and increasingly short-sighted decisions.

The modern organization often feels like a frustrating, chaotic place, where the system manages you rather than you managing it. This pervasive feeling stems from a fundamental mismatch: static organizational structures and processes attempting to navigate a dynamic, unpredictable world. When faced with challenges, individuals and teams resort to "workarounds"—temporary fixes like expediting urgent tasks—that, while seemingly effective in the short term, become permanent, ingrained behaviors. These workarounds, or "survival methodology," create a "better-before-worse" dynamic, where immediate gains mask a slow, debilitating erosion of the underlying system's health.

This cycle of firefighting is remarkably seductive because its immediate rewards are visible and often praised. For instance, at Harley-Davidson, project managers who heroically pushed products out the door despite underlying process flaws were celebrated, even as their actions created more problems for future projects. Similarly, BP's Texas City refinery, facing prolonged low margins, repeatedly cut costs and postponed investments, leading to a tragic explosion. Each short-term cost-saving measure felt like a win, but collectively, they dismantled safety and operational integrity.

The consequence is a vicious cycle where workarounds beget more workarounds, leading to declining performance, growing chaos, and burnout. Leaders, often far removed from the actual work, tend to blame individuals rather than the flawed system, exacerbating mistrust and disengagement. This "fundamental attribution error" leads to punitive measures and increased monitoring, further stifling open communication and problem-solving. Escaping this trap requires a fundamental shift from static, rule-based management to a dynamic, principles-driven approach.

2. Dynamic Work Design: A Principles-Based Approach to Adaptability

Dynamic work design originated in a chance meeting in 1996 at Harley-Davidson’s corporate cafeteria, the Rally Point.

Dynamic Work Design (DWD) offers a new way of working that enables organizations to find their unique "better way" by embracing continuous adaptation and learning. Unlike static management approaches that rely on rigid rules and one-time initiatives, DWD is built on a set of five core principles that guide ongoing discovery and improvement. This approach emerged from decades of collaboration between a factory veteran (Don Kieffer) and an academic (Nelson Repenning), who observed that complex organizational problems often had simple, overlooked solutions.

The core idea is to transform organizations into "living systems" that regularly adjust to their environment, much like modern GPS systems that adapt to real-time traffic. Instead of trying to predict every future scenario and create rules for it, DWD helps organizations build the capability to respond to change as it happens. This means moving beyond the "fix-it-all-at-once" mentality of large-scale change initiatives, which often overwhelm systems and push people deeper into workarounds.

DWD fosters a virtuous cycle of performance improvement, motivation, and learning by starting small, solving real problems, and reinvesting gains. It's akin to how video games are designed:

• Small increments: Learn a few skills, master a level.
• Immediate feedback: See progress, identify deficits.
• Growing challenge: Tackle harder problems, build new capabilities.
  This approach ensures that every improvement builds confidence and competence, making the organization more robust and less susceptible to disruption.

3. Solve the Right Problem: Diagnose the System, Not Just the Symptoms

What problem are you trying to solve?

Effective problem-solving begins with formulating a clear, quantified problem statement that is free of blame or proposed solutions. This "discovery mindset" is crucial because our "automatic processing" (thinking fast) often leads us to jump to conclusions or blame individuals, obscuring the true systemic causes. For example, when paper losses at a Panamanian corrugated box plant were high, the CEO initially blamed operators or equipment, but direct observation revealed issues like unnecessary machine shutdowns for lunch and damaged paper rolls.

Leaders must resist the urge to rely solely on past experience or reports and instead "go see the work" firsthand. This direct observation, often uncomfortable for executives, reveals hidden inefficiencies, outdated practices, and undocumented workarounds that are easily fixed. Mike Morales, the CEO of the box plant, discovered that a daily machine shutdown for lunch, a relic of an old power grid issue, was a major contributor to paper waste. Similarly, a hospital surgeon found that constant phone calls and resident interruptions were delaying critical CT scan results.

Starting with "uncomfortably small" but important problems allows for rapid experimentation and learning. These small wins, achieved quickly and with minimal investment, build momentum and reveal the next set of problems. For instance, fixing the lunch break schedule and forklift clamps at the box plant cost less than $50,000 but saved over $250,000 annually. This approach ensures that solutions are grounded in reality, not assumptions, and that resources are spent efficiently, avoiding the common pitfall of automating a process that isn't understood.

4. Structure for Discovery: Aligning Everyone's Learning

Structure for discovery means getting everyone playing the same game with the same rules so that everyone is learning together.

People are constantly learning and adapting on the job, but without a common structure, this learning can be misdirected or counterproductive. Each individual, based on their unique experiences and pressures, develops their own "homegrown" methods and workarounds. At the Palace Station Hotel, front desk staff, despite being well-trained, developed inconsistent check-in procedures, leading to missed opportunities for email capture and restaurant promotion. This uncoordinated learning prevents the organization from achieving its collective goals.

Structuring for discovery ensures that individual learning contributes to organizational success by providing clear targets, shared intent, explicit activities, and regular feedback.

• Clear Targets & Shared Intent: Everyone understands what needs to be achieved and why it matters. At Harley-Davidson, clarifying whether a new engine needed more horsepower or torque, and why (Willie G. Davidson's "two bike-lengths" analogy), aligned the entire design team.
• Explicit Activities: Daily tasks are consciously articulated and aligned with targets, bringing habitual actions into the realm of conscious choice. This helps identify outdated routines or conflicting efforts.
• Regular Feedback: Continuous, quantified assessment of progress against targets allows for real-time adjustments and problem-solving. This prevents "superstitious learning" where success is attributed to the wrong actions.

This principle transforms daily work into a series of small, coordinated experiments, fostering a culture of continuous improvement. At the Women's Lunch Place, a shelter for at-risk women, developing a "strength score" for guests provided clear targets and feedback, allowing advocates to focus their efforts and demonstrate tangible improvements in clients' lives. This not only improved service delivery but also aided in securing critical funding. By engaging those doing the work in designing and refining processes, organizations tap into a vast reservoir of tacit knowledge and boost employee motivation.

5. Connect the Human Chain: Designing Effective Handoffs and Huddles

Organizations are human systems built to connect people, to wire them together so that work gets done.

Many organizations mistakenly confuse the design of IT or financial systems with the design of the human networks that actually get work done. This oversight leads to broken "work chains" where information or materials are not effectively transferred between people. At BP's Toledo refinery, Ron, a purchasing agent, struggled with an outdated IT system that couldn't capture all necessary information for purchase orders. This forced him to chase down details via email or guess, leading to costly rework and delays, despite his dedication.

Effective work chains require two types of transfers: handoffs for clear, standardized information, and huddles for uncertain, complex issues.

• Handoffs: When information is simple and well-understood, a clear, agreed-upon transfer is sufficient. Ron improved his handoffs by creating a simple checklist for common purchase requests, ensuring he received all necessary information upfront. This reduced rework and sped up processing.
• Huddles: When information is ambiguous or requires discussion and problem-solving, face-to-face meetings are essential. Ron started holding huddles with requesters for non-standard items and with accounts payable for bounced invoices, resolving issues in minutes that previously took days of email exchanges.

Connecting the "management chain" also relies on distinguishing between planned and event-based huddles. Planned huddles (regular meetings) should match the speed at which work generates issues, while "triggered huddles" (like Toyota's andon cord) bring managers together only when specific conditions are met. At Analog Devices, a semiconductor manufacturer, daily huddles for prototype evaluation, instead of bi-weekly meetings, reduced evaluation time from four months to less than thirty days by eliminating wasted setup/teardown time. This ensures managerial attention is focused where and when it's most needed, preventing small problems from escalating.

6. Regulate for Flow: Finish More by Controlling How Much You Start

Finish More by Controlling How Much You Start

The intuitive belief that keeping everyone busy maximizes organizational output is a fundamental misconception that leads to debilitating overload and gridlock. When too much work-in-process (WIP) clogs the system, it triggers "local reprioritization" (individuals choosing what to work on) and "expediting" (managers pushing urgent tasks), creating chaos, task switching, and reduced productivity. At Yale University Hospital, cardiac patients often waited hours in hallways after surgery due to ICU bed shortages, leading to complications and increased costs, despite surgeons operating at full capacity.

Regulating for flow means intentionally controlling the amount of work entering the system, much like an airport closes an "airplane door" once a flight is ready for departure. This ensures that once work begins, it flows to completion with minimal interruption. At Yale, moving the ICU bed flow meeting to 5:30 a.m. and linking the number of surgeries to available beds reduced patient wait times and increased ICU capacity by 20%. This "finish more by starting less" approach prioritizes completion over initiation.

Implementing flow regulation often involves creating visual "vital signs" to monitor workload and identify bottlenecks. The Broad Institute used physical "parking spaces" for sample trays, signaling when upstream steps should pause. Flint Hills Resources used visual boards with "virtual parking spaces" for maintenance work orders. These systems make congestion visible, allowing teams to:

• Identify bottlenecks: Where work consistently piles up.
• Prioritize effectively: Focus on the most important tasks.
• Reduce waste: Eliminate task switching and rework.
  By eliminating the inefficiencies of overload, organizations like Broad, Flint Hills, and Standard Chartered Bank achieved dramatic improvements in cycle times (80% reduction) and productivity (3x increase), transforming chaotic systems into predictable, high-performing ones.

7. Visualize the Work: Making Invisible Processes Tangible and Actionable

Make the invisible visible.

In knowledge work, where tasks are often hidden in inboxes, spreadsheets, and individual to-do lists, problems remain invisible until they escalate into crises. Unlike a factory floor where physical parts make workflow visible, intellectual work lacks tangible cues, making it difficult to see bottlenecks, redundancies, or stalled progress. This invisibility fosters private workarounds, suppresses problem-solving, and creates a disconnect between how work is done and how managers perceive it.

Visualizing the work creates a "radar screen" that allows everyone to see the entire workflow, fostering collective understanding and problem-solving. Fannie Mae's accounting team, struggling with a chaotic 13-day monthly close, created a "Close Line" using string, index cards, and clothespins. Each card represented a task, moved across columns representing days. This simple, low-tech solution:

• Revealed dependencies: Showed which tasks relied on others.
• Exposed redundancies: Identified unneeded or duplicated steps.
• Clarified progress: Made it instantly clear if tasks were on schedule.
  This transparency transformed their 4-day bottleneck into a single day, reducing overtime by 80% in the first month.

Effective visual management systems integrate clear targets, metrics, activities, and issues into a dynamic, shared display. Broad Institute's problem board, for example, used sticky notes to track problem-solving efforts, making it easy to see stalled issues and allocate resources. Their technology development board visually managed project portfolios, highlighting delays with "pink sticky notes." These boards facilitate:

• Real-time problem identification: Bottlenecks become immediately apparent.
• Collaborative problem-solving: Everyone sees the same issues and contributes to solutions.
• Flow regulation: Visual cues help manage workload and prevent overload.
  The power lies not in the tools themselves (digital or analog), but in the conversations and collective action they enable. A simple, messy board that sparks productive dialogue is far more effective than a perfectly polished, unused digital dashboard.

8. Lead with Principles: The Anti-Initiative Path to Sustainable Transformation

As a leader, I always go back to the principles of work design. They’re the thing I ground myself in.

Dynamic Work Design is not another fleeting management initiative; it's an "anti-initiative" that fosters a continuous, principles-driven approach to leadership and organizational change. Unlike traditional programs that often fail due to unrealistic expectations, "worse-before-better" dynamics, and a focus on tools over understanding, DWD emphasizes a gradual, iterative transformation. Leaders must resist the urge to implement DWD as a one-time, top-down mandate with posters and coffee mugs, as this breeds cynicism and disengagement.

The key to getting started is to choose a problem that is "small and important"—one that eliminates significant firefighting with minimal effort and reveals the next problem to be solved. Don Kieffer's experience at Intermatic, a manufacturing company, illustrates this perfectly. Faced with a chaotic 60% on-time shipping rate, he focused his executive team on the seemingly small problem of "Why can't we ship today's orders today?" This deep dive, tracing individual missed shipments back through the system, uncovered dozens of hidden issues, from a broken printer to misplaced paperwork in finance.

Engaging directly with the work, rather than just issuing commands, allows leaders to model the discovery mindset and build organizational capability. Don's "shipping dock" investigation not only fixed immediate problems (on-time shipping rose to over 90% in two months) but also taught his team how to diagnose and solve problems themselves. This approach transforms workarounds from a source of antagonism into an engine of collaboration and capability development.

Broad Institute's pivot to COVID testing exemplifies the power of leading with DWD principles during extreme disruption. When asked to scale testing from zero to 100,000 tests/day, their leaders didn't create a grand strategy document. Instead, they:

• Built a small working line: Staffed by senior leaders, fostering direct discovery.
• Used daily huddles and visual boards: To connect the human chain and regulate flow.
• Solved problems iteratively: From supply chain issues (e.g., using blood tubes for samples) to process bottlenecks.
  This principles-driven approach allowed them to become one of the nation's largest, most efficient testing labs in six months, demonstrating that DWD builds adaptable "organizational muscles" that thrive in uncertainty.

Last updated: October 7, 2025