The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:10 - 00:00:33:19
Kevin Eikenberry
You've experienced roadblocks at work, and sometimes wondered why it seems so hard and takes so long to get things done. You've seen workarounds work until they don't, and you experience bloated processes that frustrate everyone. You've told yourself there has to be a better way. In this episode, we'll explore that better way and that, when used effectively, can almost seem like magic.

00:00:33:21 - 00:00:56:13
Kevin Eikenberry
Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders like you grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively and make a bigger, positive difference for their teams, organizations and the world. If you are listening to this podcast, you can join us in the future. Live, and then share, get this information center and be a part of the process.

00:00:56:13 - 00:01:19:13
Kevin Eikenberry
If you want to learn more about that and where the show airs and all those things, you can join us on our Facebook or LinkedIn groups. Two of the places where these shows emanate. And so just go to remarkable podcast.com/facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linked in to find out more and get connected and find out when these are happening live.

00:01:19:18 - 00:01:40:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Today's episode is brought to you by my latest book, Flexible Leadership. Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence. It's time to realize that styles can get in our way, and that following our strengths might not always be the best approach in a world more complex and uncertain than ever. Leaders need a new perspective and a set of tools to create great results for their organizations and team members.

00:01:40:18 - 00:02:08:19
Kevin Eikenberry
And that's what flexible leadership can do for you. Learn more and or your copy today at remarkable podcast.com/flexible. And with that I'm going to bring in my guests. Here they are. I'm going to introduce them to you. And then we will dive in today. My guests are Nelson repenting and Don Keefer. Nelson doctor. Repenting is a is the School of Management distinguished professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

00:02:08:21 - 00:02:33:13
Kevin Eikenberry
He's currently director of MIT Leadership Center and was recently recognized by Poets and Quants as the world's top as one of the world's top executive MBA instructors. His scholarly work has appeared in Management Science, Organization Science, Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academic of Management Review, and many others. Don Keefer is a senior lecturer in operations management at MIT Sloan.

00:02:33:15 - 00:02:58:00
Kevin Eikenberry
And he has a different sort of background. He's also the co-creator of the dynamic work design, group at MIT. He started running equipment in factories at age 17. He was the VP of operational excellence at Harley Davidson, where he worked for 15 years. And for the nearly 20 years he's been advising leaders in a variety of industries around the globe.

00:02:58:01 - 00:03:33:02
Kevin Eikenberry
His guidance was instrumental in transforming both the production and technical development areas of Broad Institute, a Cambridge based genomic sequencing organization. Now an industry leader. He's founder of Shift Gear Work Design and also teaches operations management at Ave T in Copenhagen together. And why they're here, other than the fact that they're really smart. Together, they put their experience and research together in a new book called There's Got to Be a Better Way How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of Stuff that gets in the way of real work.

00:03:33:04 - 00:03:38:05
Kevin Eikenberry
What an awesome subtitle. I'm so glad you guys are both here. Welcome. Welcome to the show.

00:03:38:07 - 00:03:39:13
Nelson Repenning
Hey, thanks for having us.

00:03:39:15 - 00:03:41:21
Don Kieffer
Thanks for having us, Kevin. Happy to be here.

00:03:41:22 - 00:04:01:16
Kevin Eikenberry
So that is perhaps the best book subtitle of the year. And trust me, because, so many, they get shown to me. I see a lot of them, and it's probably my favorite. So, listen, I'm really glad you guys are here. And I really want to start with how you guys got connected. So.

00:04:01:16 - 00:04:09:01
Kevin Eikenberry
So, Don, tell us sort of about the journey of you guys getting connected and kind of the journey that leads to the book.

00:04:09:03 - 00:04:14:13
Don Kieffer
Well, actually, I'm going to let Nelson start this story off, and then I'll finish it because it's a funny story.

00:04:14:15 - 00:04:15:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Okay.

00:04:15:08 - 00:04:16:20
Nelson Repenning
Yeah. So, that.

00:04:16:22 - 00:04:18:12
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:04:18:13 - 00:04:36:21
Nelson Repenning
So I started as a grad student at MIT, actually, in the same group that I'm in. I thought I was going to be here for 4 or 5 years, and that was more than 30 years ago. But I was looking, as all grad students do, for a research topic. And at the time, all my PhD student colleagues were, yeah, this is MIT.

00:04:37:01 - 00:04:54:05
Nelson Repenning
We're doing very mathematically oriented stuff. So they were developing new algorithms and, you know, decision methods and stuff like this. And this was the era of the quality movement. So there was a lot of stuff related to lean production and quality management, so and so forth. And I just felt like I couldn't compete. You know, I thought I knew a lot of math till I got here.

00:04:54:05 - 00:05:12:00
Nelson Repenning
And then I realized I was in a whole different league of baseball than I had ever anticipated. And so I was kind of looking around for a research topic, and, I ended up kind of happening upon a very heretical question, which was, did anybody actually use these tools that we were spending all this time and energy creating?

00:05:12:02 - 00:05:31:10
Nelson Repenning
And I started reading the literature and so on and so forth, and it turned out the answer to that question was maybe at best, and in many cases, not at all. And that's actually turned out to be basically the question in some sense. I worked on my whole life, which is, you know, if there's a set of practices that we all agree are good things to do, why don't people use them?

00:05:31:11 - 00:05:51:21
Nelson Repenning
And so I started working on that. And at the time, the National Science Foundation had a grant program, where in order to get the money, you had to have an industry partner, which was a new effort for them at the time because they were trying to get research that was a little bit more practical. And one of Don's colleagues at Harley raised his hand at a meeting and said, yeah, we'd love to partner with you all at MIT.

00:05:51:23 - 00:06:07:23
Nelson Repenning
And so they became one of the field sites we were working with and, my contact there was the head of quality for Harley, the late Ron Hutchinson, and we were working together, and we were kind of walking down the hallway at one point and Don comes walking the other day and Hutch said, you know, you really got to talk to this Keefer guy.

00:06:07:23 - 00:06:31:08
Nelson Repenning
He's a real mover and shaker here at Harley Davidson. And so we ended up totally impromptu, having lunch at the Harley cafeteria that day. And, you know, I think we were kindred spirits, like, we were both really trying to figure out how to move the needle. And, you know, Don, I'll tell you more about what he was doing at Harley at a moment, but it really started, you know, like all good things in life, completely serendipitously with the, you know, a random lunch, probably a cheeseburger and Harley or whatever it was.

00:06:31:08 - 00:06:36:22
Nelson Repenning
And we've been working together ever since. So I was very lucky for my perspective.

00:06:37:00 - 00:06:37:22
Don Kieffer
And, I mean.

00:06:38:00 - 00:06:39:18
Kevin Eikenberry
What do you want to add to that?

00:06:39:20 - 00:07:03:07
Don Kieffer
I started a quite the opposite path, a kid from Kentucky who had a lot of front line jobs when he was right out of high school, mostly in, in, factories, metal cutting lays, you know, hard, dirty work like that. And but I was a problem solver. And in 25 years later, I was working at Harley and had talked my way into leading as a manufacturing guy, leading the biggest engine project they'd had in a decade.

00:07:03:07 - 00:07:32:05
Don Kieffer
In 2010, 88. And I was energetic, you know, fired up, changing everything. And Nelson was like this very quiet, stern, you know, intellectual guy. And, so we had lunch and I'm telling him all these things that I had done in this to get this project moving. It's gonna break this wall down, break this wall down. And I showed him that I had invented a stage gate process by taking the interviewing people.

00:07:32:05 - 00:07:50:20
Don Kieffer
And I had no idea what a stage gate process was. I showed them how, what I did, and he just looks back, looks at me, says that once you read a book once in a while. Stage gate process was invented in automotive 25 years ago. And I went, okay. So then I started telling him this other thing I was doing, and I was like, oh yeah, just this thing over here.

00:07:50:20 - 00:08:06:22
Don Kieffer
And he goes, well, wait a minute, I want to learn. I want to learn more about that. And I go, what do you mean? It's just some dumb little thing I did. He says, yeah, but there's not a lot of literature on this. And literature there is says you should do exactly the opposite of what you did. And the results are stunning.

00:08:06:22 - 00:08:30:23
Don Kieffer
So I want to learn more. And just I was clever enough is kind of this I call myself a factory rat. Is this factory at the to think I'm just a loose cannon here. Maybe this guy can help me. And that's how he started. He was getting primary data, I was getting guidance. And together we've been fixing things and talking about how it worked for 30 years.

00:08:30:23 - 00:08:32:16
Don Kieffer
Now.

00:08:32:18 - 00:08:43:03
Kevin Eikenberry
So? So, Nelson, what's the big. So I love that. Thank you. And that really sets the table for this whole conversation which is fantastic. So Nelson, what's the big idea of the book.

00:08:43:05 - 00:09:11:23
Nelson Repenning
Yeah. So I would say one of the things I've noticed in my career is that I always have the pieces long before I can see the whole puzzle, and that the, the kind of puzzle, big picture, I think came together kind of late. But the big idea really comes down to, most organizations. And if we could spend some time, if you want to go to the arcane details, a kind of a lot of the management theory that dominates what we do every day basically presumes that the world is a pretty predictable place.

00:09:11:23 - 00:09:41:18
Nelson Repenning
We use the jargon static. It's not yet exactly right. Oh, and actually, Kevin, the way that I try to demonstrate this when I, often talk about this in class is we do this little sort of rhetorical exercise. Well, I'll ask students particularly. They're from big companies, you know, how long is budget season in your company? Meaning, you know, from the day the budget goes into effect, how many months in advance do you start prepping, negotiating and making slides and spreadsheets and so on, so forth.

00:09:41:20 - 00:09:59:08
Nelson Repenning
And, you know, the typical answer I get is sort of on the order of six months for most big, big companies, you know, and then I ask them, and how long is that budget accurate enough once you start using it, that it's a good guide for action. And the answer typically is about a quarter. Right. So if you think about.

00:09:59:08 - 00:10:02:17
Kevin Eikenberry
It, I, you know, thought you were going to give. Yeah about a month. Yeah.

00:10:02:19 - 00:10:21:19
Nelson Repenning
You know but best case quarter right. So that means we're spending twice as much time creating this thing as we are actually using it. Right. And then of course, is, you know, you and all your audience knows is that once the world is changed, you spend the rest of the year making it look like you're following that budget, when in fact you're not, because the world is now a different place.

00:10:21:19 - 00:10:35:23
Nelson Repenning
Right? And so we talk a lot about work arounds. And again, you know, everyone is familiar and they wouldn't be in the jobs are in if they didn't have a big toolkit full of duct tape and safety pins and other things, you know, basically to meet their numbers. Not that the world is different. And I think the big idea.

00:10:36:00 - 00:10:42:18
Kevin Eikenberry
There are all sorts of implications and unintended consequences of that. And that's just one process.

00:10:42:18 - 00:11:03:22
Nelson Repenning
Exactly. And the big idea of the book is, is that so much of the creativity and energy of people and big organizations is going to adapt to this dynamic world, but they're doing it essentially under the waterline. It's all surreptitious because, you know, they're making it look like they're following the budget and the plans and strategies when they're not right.

00:11:03:23 - 00:11:20:03
Nelson Repenning
And so the big idea of the book really, is that if we accept the fact that the world is unpredictable and that our impact on that world is also unpredictable, right? You know, all the big tech companies, you know, they invent some new product, they have no idea what it's going to do or whether it's going to succeed or so on, so forth.

00:11:20:05 - 00:11:48:03
Nelson Repenning
If you accept that we're going to actually design and manage the work differently. And so you referenced earlier this thing that I've created called dynamic work design. And basically what it is, it's a set of design principles that says if we accept the fact that the world is unpredictable, we might actually do things a little bit differently. And I think what Don and I have discovered is with that just one shift in mindset, are the gains that we can unlock in how organizations work are really quite stunning.

00:11:48:03 - 00:12:07:20
Nelson Repenning
And I'm sure we'll get to this a little bit, a little bit later. But I think the sort of corollary to the big idea is that people have no idea how much waste and churn and frustration and chaos underlies all those efforts to make it look like we're following the plan, when in fact, the world has changed.

00:12:07:22 - 00:12:21:11
Nelson Repenning
And so, you know, we could talk about the details, but the gains, it has unlocked and the companies we work with have been so big that as the academic of this paper, I'm sometimes kind of scratching my head like, is this really real? But I've seen it happen enough times. I'm pretty confident that it is.

00:12:21:13 - 00:12:42:18
Kevin Eikenberry
One of my observations is that everyone who's listening is nodding their head, yeah, about everybody else's work, but not necessarily that there, because we'll talk about visualization, but probably at least a little bit before we're done. So, so one of the things that you guys say early in the book, and, and we've already walked around it.

00:12:43:00 - 00:13:01:11
Kevin Eikenberry
So tonight I'm just going to have you address it specifically. And that is what you guys called the firefighting trap. And what I find is a lot of folks got promoted because they were really good at fighting fires. And what Nelson is saying is like, we're creating them. So, like, tell me about the firefighting trap.

00:13:01:13 - 00:13:08:01
Don Kieffer
Yeah. Actually, this is the first half of Nelson's career in research. I've experienced it, but he's really.

00:13:08:01 - 00:13:09:05
Kevin Eikenberry
Why I want, I wanted he's.

00:13:09:05 - 00:13:10:06
Don Kieffer
Really studied it. Yeah.

00:13:10:06 - 00:13:13:15
Kevin Eikenberry
So we'll talk about the real world, the basics.

00:13:13:17 - 00:13:41:04
Don Kieffer
Okay. That's a comment I really appreciate. Yeah. So the basic problem is the basic dynamic is work is going along. And then all of a sudden for some reason you get behind either it's a business success, you got more orders than you think or problem happened and things start slowing down. Maybe that it takes you longer to deliver than the customer wants, but all of a sudden there's a need to expedite something.

00:13:41:06 - 00:14:04:07
Don Kieffer
You know, in the old days in factories and a whole army. Expedite it, go through the factory and pick orders and pull them through the system because the normal system wasn't delivering it. So as soon as you intervene in the system and pick one job and put it over the other one, everything else slows down. Now, sometimes you have to do that because there's a fire and emergency or a change in the market, and you need to make sure the right things are happening because your system can't respond quickly enough.

00:14:04:09 - 00:14:28:09
Don Kieffer
But if you don't go rebuild that system to respond as fast as the market wants, that back wall gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and pretty soon the more you intervene, the slower things get and it becomes a reinforcing cycle. And so now you get people gain the system because this is the way it works. And I get rewarded for being that guy can go down and make this thing work and deliver it.

00:14:28:14 - 00:14:52:08
Don Kieffer
And the people actually make stuff, work quietly, get ignored. So now well-intentioned people begin behaving this way because that's the way it's rewarded as work slows down. And then there's a prior to that, says the Hatless a double hot list, because everyone knows the only way to get anything done is to have on that freaking hot list. So then it just the chaos just boils and boils and boils underneath.

00:14:52:10 - 00:15:00:17
Kevin Eikenberry
And and like in like we all know of the person you can go to in your organization that that's the person they can get stuff done right.

00:15:00:19 - 00:15:30:23
Don Kieffer
And the funny thing is, the reason they can get stuff done is because they know the right people. They golf with them, they go hunting with them. And the way that the one big insight for me about this whole thing has been, this is a human system. We work in, and if we design the work among that and, and sort out that complex web of human connections so that the work flows, then all of a sudden the right things are happening over time.

00:15:30:23 - 00:15:33:05
Don Kieffer
That's that's the big idea for me.

00:15:33:07 - 00:15:48:09
Kevin Eikenberry
I know we'll get we'll try to get to the idea of the human chain, which you just sort of intimated a little bit there, done. But one of things that I was thinking, and I thought this before, but as I was reading the book, one of the things I was thinking is, you know, the more people, the more complexity we all know that.

00:15:48:11 - 00:16:04:13
Kevin Eikenberry
And so many of our processes have so many people in every one of those handoffs is one of the chances for one of these things can happen. So so, Nelson, since we since Dan just talked about half of your career, you know, 2.5 minutes, you add anything to the firefighting track before we go on?

00:16:04:18 - 00:16:21:15
Nelson Repenning
You know, he's a pretty good student actually. He got it. He got it definitely. Right. I you know, I think the thing I would add to it and I'll do this kind of chronologically is, you know, what? Did I work together? This idea of firefighting was really kind of coming together. And it's interesting just to kind of go to the human system a little bit.

00:16:21:19 - 00:16:36:19
Nelson Repenning
One of the things that happened at Harley and we don't get credit for this label is they had a set of project managers, and a little bit later I actually reported to Dave and he can talk about this. And, you know, among those project managers, there was some of them that had the reputation that, man, they could get stuff done.

00:16:36:22 - 00:16:53:10
Nelson Repenning
Didn't matter how chaotic things were, their project was going to be delivered come hell or high water. And, you know, we did a little research to try and figure out what was going on. And what we concluded was exactly what Don, you know, mentioned was is the way they got stuff done is they had better connections to the scarce resources they needed.

00:16:53:10 - 00:17:14:08
Nelson Repenning
Right? So they knew the guy in the test lab, and they knew the guy over in the, you know, computer simulation or whatever. But I think the funny part is, is that, some folks that we worked with changed the label from the firefighters to the firefighting arsonists, right? Because what they realized was, is that in the effort to get these projects done, which I think was totally good faith, actually, there was no malfeasance.

00:17:14:09 - 00:17:36:14
Nelson Repenning
They were setting the fire on the next year's project because they were stealing resources and destabilizing the schedule and so on, so forth. So after the work at Harley, I spent some time working in the energy industry, and we were talking before we got started recording. You had started there a little bit. And one of the things that was really interesting and scary about that is that they had this dynamic much more acutely, actually, than Harley did.

00:17:36:14 - 00:17:54:16
Nelson Repenning
And it's really easy to see in the context of maintenance. Right? You know, you imagine you got a big, complicated oil refinery. Maintenance is really expensive. You know, physical plant is a huge chunk of your expenditure every year. It's the easiest thing in the world to say, you know, I'm going to overhaul that pump next summer, right? Or we'll do it next year or whatever.

00:17:54:16 - 00:18:02:13
Nelson Repenning
And we just postpone it a little bit. And then your revenue looks great because we're not spending as much on maintenance. And we got we can run more barrels.

00:18:02:15 - 00:18:04:17
Kevin Eikenberry
And maybe now or pay me later. Right. Yeah.

00:18:04:18 - 00:18:31:20
Nelson Repenning
And nothing and nothing happens. Right. Other than you look good. And of course, you know, it just gets worse and worse and worse. And then eventually what happens in that industry because the risk profile is really high, is something really bad happens, right? Something blows up or somebody gets hurt or even worse. And what I sort of, you know, kind of concluded from that, seeing at this very different context was sort of two things, which is, number one, I think almost every large organization has some flavor of this firefighting dynamic.

00:18:31:22 - 00:18:55:18
Nelson Repenning
You know, it's more acute in some places than others. And again, we'll get to it in a moment. I think the cost in terms of the drain on your resources for your organization is much bigger than most people. Appreciate. And then the other thing, you know, not to be sort of too sober about it is it is something that I think senior leaders really need to keep their eye on, particularly if you're in an industry that has some kind of risk profile, because when it goes south, some really ugly stuff can happen.

00:18:55:18 - 00:19:11:19
Nelson Repenning
And again, you know, I think one of the things that made the energy industry so prone to this is you can do it wrong in that industry for a long period of time and get rewarded for it. But when something bad happens, it's really bad. And, you know, Harley was probably in the middle, you know, in terms of that continuum.

00:19:12:01 - 00:19:21:05
Nelson Repenning
So I think it's a very real thing. Almost every manager probably is dealing with it. And again, if you can get on top of it, the gains for performance can be pretty big.

00:19:21:07 - 00:19:46:00
Don Kieffer
But there is an underlying dynamic, Kevin, that really encourages this behavior, even among well-intentioned people, which is I do all this kind of trimming and refocusing, get on the right priorities, stop training on that, blah, blah, blah. Really fix the maintenance program and the numbers go up and two years later I get promoted. Then Port Nelson comes in and he's got something.

00:19:46:00 - 00:20:07:17
Don Kieffer
It's now been deteriorated a lower, less stable. And and this is Nelson's story. Then he calls me up and says, Don, how did you do that? I said, I just cut maintenance, so nothing to do the same thing. So he gets promoted and so it's just self-reinforcing. And then the brain pieces is that if I touch a hot stove, I learn really quickly not to touch that hot stove.

00:20:07:19 - 00:20:23:05
Don Kieffer
But imagine if you touch the hot stove and you don't feel the paint for two years later when you're driving your car, you blame that on the car so that the human brain just doesn't connect the dots of those long spans of time. So managers actually are learning the exactly the wrong lessons in this cycle.

00:20:23:07 - 00:20:30:00
Kevin Eikenberry
And got promoted for the wrong things. So they keep doing those things because human behavior says, why wouldn't you?

00:20:30:02 - 00:20:32:16
Don Kieffer
It's all turned out well for me. What's wrong with you?

00:20:32:18 - 00:20:49:12
Kevin Eikenberry
This is not I want I want everyone who's listening that if you're hearing this and you're sensing this in your self reorganization, don't go into blame here, because that's not like it's just this is the it all makes sense. We've got to we gotta get past the blame because this well they need to fix it like they would fix it.

00:20:49:12 - 00:21:12:06
Kevin Eikenberry
We wouldn't have a problem right. They change the budgeting process. That may be right. We could spend a bunch of time in, in the, in the big idea of dynamic, work design and the five pieces. And we're not going to get to all five. I'm just going to tell everybody that you are listening to a conversation with Nelson repenting, and Dan Kieffer about their brand new book, As If You're with us, live.

00:21:12:07 - 00:21:31:17
Kevin Eikenberry
It's not even out yet. Till next week. You can still order it, of course. There's got to be a better way we could get to all of that. But there's one other thing that nearly every organization that I've worked with in 30 plus years, if you're with them for any length of time, this word will come up.

00:21:31:19 - 00:21:56:15
Kevin Eikenberry
And that is silos. So let's talk a little bit, because I think so much of what follows in the book comes down to firefighting and silos. Like if we if we understand those root causes, if you will, of those foundational things, that helps us make more sense of the rest of us. So I don't know, what are you going to talk?

00:21:56:16 - 00:21:59:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Take silos. The risk of silos.

00:22:00:00 - 00:22:20:13
Nelson Repenning
Yeah. I'm happy to start at John Don. I know we'll definitely jump in. Yeah. I think one of the, So one of the reasons that we know that there's got to be a better way, actually, is I think everybody has experienced it directly themselves in probably one of two places, which is either if you were involved in a startup in the early days, startups tend to be very dynamic, right?

00:22:20:13 - 00:22:34:07
Nelson Repenning
You know, at the Starbucks napkin level, right? You don't even have roles yet. You're just going back and forth and, you know, you talk to founders and they will often talk about, you know, the best time of my life is when we were all in that crappy warehouse and we were sitting in the same room at rented tables.

00:22:34:09 - 00:22:48:02
Nelson Repenning
But then if you're successful, the organization start to grow and people put in processes which you need, you need budgets, you need plans and so on, so forth. But I think a side effect of that, if you're not careful, is you lose some of that dynamism because now we need an HR function and we need a product development function.

00:22:48:02 - 00:23:06:19
Nelson Repenning
And so on, so forth. I think the other place you see it is in crisis. And, you know, I'll just give MIT as an example, you know, during the summer of Covid, I took my kid for spring break in March, I left, I was teaching in class. I came back a week later. There was a big chain and a padlock on the door to the building.

00:23:06:19 - 00:23:28:19
Nelson Repenning
Right. You know, so I was teaching from my kitchen table, and that summer, between March and September, when the students came back, we probably got more done. And those 3 or 4 months than we had in the previous ten years. You know, we had card swipe terminals. Our friends at Brode did the testing for us. We you know, it was just an amazing amount of work I've done and everybody knows why.

00:23:28:19 - 00:23:43:02
Nelson Repenning
Right. Which is kind of all the B.S. and the silos melt away and we suddenly have a very clear target, which is we need to get the students back. And, you know, if the dean had to go move chairs around in order to get people through the testing, he'd go move chairs, right? Because all the hierarchy sort of went away.

00:23:43:04 - 00:23:57:10
Nelson Repenning
So we know it's possible. And yet I think the sort of interesting paradox is that we know it's possible we don't do it on a day to day basis. And I think, you know, part of that reason is, is that the natural evolution, which I think has this roots in this sort of static view of the world, is we start creating these silos, right?

00:23:57:10 - 00:24:14:15
Nelson Repenning
We have HR and so on and so forth. And pretty soon, because people are not connected to the target of the organization, we start focusing on our local targets, which is, you know, I need a bigger budget for HR or whatever happens. And I think the the to get to the bottom line is the, the biggest technique that we have developed.

00:24:14:15 - 00:24:35:07
Nelson Repenning
And I know Dom I'll have a ton to say about this is to get people to realize is that the work does not care what function it is, right? You know, if you want to think of the silos just going up and down, the work kind of goes across. And when people start focusing on how does the work move through the organization, they can suddenly see all those barriers and kind of the base that shows up much more clearly.

00:24:35:09 - 00:24:55:10
Nelson Repenning
And then the problems in terms of making the work better almost reveal themselves. And I think just to say one more thing, this is pretty easy to do with physical work, and this is probably a theme that will come back to you because you can see the work move. Knowledge work is 100 times harder because it doesn't leave a sort of physical signature, right?

00:24:55:12 - 00:25:12:00
Nelson Repenning
You know, it moves from one silo to the next, but it's all completely opaque to us. And so when we can get people on our students, Don and I teach a class together here at MIT are doing this right now, actually, which is for their assignment. They're sort of mapping how work knowledge work is moving to the organizations I have.

00:25:12:02 - 00:25:33:08
Nelson Repenning
Yeah, I'll have them in class in a couple of weeks. And the first question will be, did anybody find anything embarrassing in their eyes, I'm going to be about this big because they're like, I cannot believe how we do work around here. So once you can see how the work moves, that has become kind of our, you know, magical, you know, vaccine for the, you know, to get rid of some of those silos and get the work moving.

00:25:33:10 - 00:26:04:20
Kevin Eikenberry
The book is worth reading for the story about the clothesline, which is which is a story about Freddie Mae. As it turns out, which is somewhat irrelevant, except that story alone is worth the book, from my perspective. So, Don, before you add anything about silos, I just want to make this comment and maybe this will resonate with someone I say to people all the time, like, you can see how strong the silos are by what t shirt are people wearing exactly?

00:26:04:22 - 00:26:25:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Are people wearing the Harley-Davidson t shirt, or are they wearing the quality t shirt, or are they wearing the second shift t shirt or like like because, however, that's how we view the work is the circle we put around it and the silos, in case you didn't know, our circles. And so, anything you want to add, Don, to the silo thing?

00:26:25:14 - 00:26:27:10
Kevin Eikenberry
I've got a couple more things.

00:26:27:12 - 00:26:45:17
Don Kieffer
I used to say. Yeah, I used to say, ask people, where is your home team? Is it your department, or is it your boss's department with your colleagues, where you work out a common plan and they have it done together? That's all integrated. And most of the time they say, well, no, I have to stand up for my team and support my team.

00:26:45:17 - 00:27:22:05
Don Kieffer
My team has got to succeed. And what happens is what happened to me working for a $200 billion company that told the legal department to cut costs. So they went down to one contract, the same contract for an individual contributor like me as Halliburton, the supplier. Halliburton. I had to pay my lawyer $5,000 to read the freakin contract, where it could have been a one page thing for me, but and it costs all kinds of chaos in the organization, for every supplier, but for the legal department in my silo, man, it looks good.

00:27:22:07 - 00:27:36:16
Don Kieffer
So I think we always go system productivity first. And because when you start getting the flow better and you get more flow at the same resources, by definition everyone's productivity rises. Yeah.

00:27:36:18 - 00:27:54:18
Nelson Repenning
You know, and I would just add to that, Kevin, really quick, my office here in Cambridge is kind of on the border of biotech, the sort of biotech Silicon Valley. The whole industry is right here in Cambridge, mass. And I probably given a talk at every one of the companies here and always on the same topic, which is, you know, to the if you want to make silos one worse, right.

00:27:54:18 - 00:28:17:11
Nelson Repenning
Put them in the matrix. Right. Which is, you know, now we have, you know, rows and columns and I've given a talk to every one of them about, you know, how they're managing their matrix organizations. And the problem that they have is not only do you have your home team and your silos, but then those silos, you know, despite, in addition to being kind of parochial, impose their own priorities on the work that's going through.

00:28:17:13 - 00:28:39:17
Nelson Repenning
And so if you're responsible for getting a molecule, you know, through the development process and one, these biotech companies, you got to go to every organization and and sell them like, this is the more important drug than the other one we're working on. And it's just a jumbled mess. And again, because people don't see the path that these projects have to follow through all these different stations to get stuff, to get stuff done it.

00:28:39:17 - 00:28:50:17
Nelson Repenning
And again, the cost of this is just enormous and I think largely hidden from most of the people that are, you know, they just spend their day trying to get stuff done without sort of really realizing the crazy that they're embedded in.

00:28:50:17 - 00:29:12:06
Kevin Eikenberry
There's there's a difference between activity and accomplishment, right. So, the the book talks about five core areas of dynamic work design. And at some level, we've talked in some ways, even though we haven't walked through them, like we might in a PowerPoint slide. We've talked about all of them at least a little bit. We've talked a little bit about the right problem and structuring for discovery.

00:29:12:06 - 00:29:28:03
Kevin Eikenberry
We've talked about, the human chain. We've talked about visualization. There's one thing you say in the book, and this is before we sort of wrap up and head to the finish line here, there's a statement that you made, and I don't know which one of you. And I've written books with other people, so I don't know which one of you is ultimately responsible.

00:29:28:03 - 00:29:48:16
Kevin Eikenberry
So I'm going to make the statement you guys can decide who wants to comment. Here's the here's the thing that I think is so correct. The statement in the book is problem formation is the single most underrated skill in management. And fundamentally, this whole conversation has been about that point of what is the real problem here. Talk about that.

00:29:48:16 - 00:29:53:02
Kevin Eikenberry
Why is that true? And how in our organizations can we fix that?

00:29:53:04 - 00:30:10:06
Don Kieffer
Well, let me start, Nelson. Like most things that we do, we can't tell who came up with it from the there's another story in the book about what's the problem you're trying to solve for that I got from Mr. Oboe, which has been, a question that has like, like a virus spread through organizations that I work in.

00:30:10:06 - 00:30:24:21
Don Kieffer
So we always know what's important. And when we decided to start writing an article, I think Nelson focused in on that. He he felt that was the most important thing. And I think Nelson, take it over from there, that the whole thing about problem formulation was, yeah.

00:30:24:22 - 00:30:41:03
Nelson Repenning
So I think that one way to sort of go at this is I've been hugely influenced my scholarly career by this basic idea that's now been in a lot of books, is we have sort of two ways of thinking. Right. So a lot of people of your audience probably read the Dan Kahneman book Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow, and there's a bunch of different variants.

00:30:41:04 - 00:30:45:17
Kevin Eikenberry
A lot more people that have it on their shelf or say they actually read it. But yeah.

00:30:45:19 - 00:31:03:22
Nelson Repenning
Yeah, you know, and and the way I think about it is, you know, we basically have, you know, conscious processes and automatic processing, right? You know, and most of what we do, you know, that conscious processing turns out to be pretty expensive. So most of what we do during the day is just based on simple rules that we've learned through, you know, practice.

00:31:03:22 - 00:31:23:20
Nelson Repenning
So, you know, there's all this hype about large language models, but we all have the original large language model in our heads, which is that sort of automatic process or that conscious processing in my mind, is one of the most scarce resources that organizations have. Right? Because we all have this high powered computer in our heads, but we don't really want to use it if we don't have to.

00:31:23:22 - 00:31:41:09
Nelson Repenning
And so we want to make sure from an organizational point of view, that people bring that to bear on this stuff that really matters. And I think the big insight that Don and I had is getting people to just state the problem they're trying to solve is a really powerful way to get people to engage a little bit more of that conscious processor.

00:31:41:09 - 00:31:50:16
Nelson Repenning
Now, to be fair, if there's any academics out there, I haven't put managers into an MRI machine. You have to scan their brains while they're writing problem statements. So this is all hypothetical, but but we.

00:31:50:16 - 00:32:02:02
Don Kieffer
Have brought them to tears. Yes, we have they for solutions and full of attributions. But we ask them what's the problem? And they stutter, stammer, their face gets red, they can't do it right.

00:32:02:03 - 00:32:07:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Or you have seven people in the room and you ask them all to do it. And when you put them on the flip chart.

00:32:07:06 - 00:32:07:15
Don Kieffer
They're all.

00:32:07:15 - 00:32:09:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Different. They're drastically different.

00:32:09:11 - 00:32:10:05
Don Kieffer
Right.

00:32:10:07 - 00:32:25:07
Nelson Repenning
And so I think the bottom line is just getting people to be clear on the problem you're trying to solve just allows us to, you know, break a bunch of frames and automatic habits and stuff like that. And, you know, it's interesting. Don and I have taught this stuff a lot. And students in the beginning of the lecture.

00:32:25:09 - 00:32:36:01
Nelson Repenning
Okay. Yeah. What problem? I'm trying to solve. Got it. I can write it down. And then we're like, okay, write a problem statement for your organization. And then suddenly they're like, oh, wait, this is a lot harder than we thought. But once they get the hang of.

00:32:36:01 - 00:32:38:03
Kevin Eikenberry
It, you conceptually. Yeah.

00:32:38:05 - 00:32:57:22
Nelson Repenning
But they're evangelized. And I think it really makes people much more effective. And, you know, another way of framing this, and then I'll, you know, Don could certainly chime in is there is nothing that brings a bad meeting to a screeching halt faster than the question of, hey, folks, what problem are we trying to solve? So it's really a power powerful intervention that's often needed.

00:32:58:00 - 00:33:20:09
Don Kieffer
When I resigned from Harley Davidson, I went to my bosses, the president's office, and, he wasn't expecting at all. I was one of the hot shots, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so I said to him, Jim, you're probably tired of me trying to tell you how to do your job, because, yes, I am. And I said, and you're probably really sick of that stupid, irritating question.

00:33:20:09 - 00:33:32:11
Don Kieffer
What's the problem you're trying to solve? Because he would tell me what to do, I go, that's great, Jim, but what's the problem you trying to solve? Stupider he gets. I'm really sick of that. I said, good, you won't have to do any more because I'm resigning.

00:33:32:13 - 00:33:48:10
Kevin Eikenberry
All right. Hey, but, before we go, I've got a couple of other things. I will sort of shift gears here before we finish. Longtime listeners will know the cost. Two questions I'm going to ask you, but Dan will start with you first here. What do you do for fun?

00:33:48:12 - 00:34:05:05
Don Kieffer
I don't even work now. Yeah, I bicycle, I bicycle way more. I'm mostly, I would say I, I'm not I don't say I'm retired, I still work, I just don't have a job. So, But I spent a lot of time on the on the bicycle.

00:34:05:07 - 00:34:07:01
Kevin Eikenberry
And. Nelson, what do you do for fun?

00:34:07:03 - 00:34:26:12
Nelson Repenning
So I am an avid masters bike racer, too. And then I also play a little golf. And, for those of you that read the book, you'll see that my mother actually makes a cameo appearance as, kicking my ass on the golf course. So that's my. Even though she's in her 80s. So, trying to regain my manhood is, you know, one of my main activities on the outside, outside of work.

00:34:26:14 - 00:34:37:23
Kevin Eikenberry
There's a theme about you getting your butt kicked at various activities in this place. So you'll have to read it to know that. So, Nelson, what are you reading these days?

00:34:38:01 - 00:34:58:06
Nelson Repenning
I just started a book called The Mindful Body by, legendary Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, who I highly recommend. She's on a bunch of different podcasts. So. And the thing that I think this would connect to a lot of the work that you've done that I've been sort of obsessed with lately is there's a lot of research that suggests that being curious changes our brain in some pretty fundamental ways.

00:34:58:06 - 00:35:02:14
Nelson Repenning
And so starting to believe that's a leadership superpower. So that's what I'm interested in.

00:35:02:16 - 00:35:05:10
Kevin Eikenberry
100% agree with that. Dan, what are you reading?

00:35:05:12 - 00:35:16:14
Don Kieffer
Well, Nelson actually did talk me into starting to read a book here and there, and, but I'm reading murder mysteries. Louise Penny, the Louise Penny, series is the one I'm on now.

00:35:16:15 - 00:35:35:20
Kevin Eikenberry
All right. Awesome. We'll have links to both of those in the show notes. As we always do. And we'll also have links to this book. These two guys wrote called There's Got to be, a better way. Where can we find you? How do you where do the people learn more about the book? Like, what do you want to say about any of that?

00:35:35:20 - 00:35:37:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Before we wrap up, guys?

00:35:38:00 - 00:35:54:19
Nelson Repenning
Yeah. So books on all the major platforms, so you can find it there. Please feel free to reach out and connect to me on LinkedIn. That's kind of my major contact with the folks out there. And then Don and I have a website for our little work design consulting company, shift gear.com. All one word. And you can check us out there.

00:35:54:21 - 00:35:56:19
Nelson Repenning
We'd love to connect with you.

00:35:56:21 - 00:36:14:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Shift gear.com. Now, before we go, everybody, I have a question for all of you. I've been asking them the questions, and I'm going to ask you the question. It's a question I ask you every single episode. It's simply this. Now what? What are you going to do with what you just heard here? Now, before we started? I don't remember now.

00:36:14:00 - 00:36:32:13
Kevin Eikenberry
If it was, I think it was Don that said, well, we'll try to be entertaining. And I had been entertained. And I guess I hope that all of you listening had a good time. But what I ultimately hope is that you take some action and the now what question begs the action? What will I do as a result of being here?

00:36:32:16 - 00:36:52:10
Kevin Eikenberry
And maybe, like, I don't know what you wrote down or mentally wrote down if you're riding your bike or doing something else right now, I encourage you to take a minute before you go forward with whatever the next thing on your list is to ask that question. Now what? What am I going to do with this? Maybe it's thinking about the fact that we have to think about work as being unpredictable and uncertain, rather than static.

00:36:52:10 - 00:37:11:15
Kevin Eikenberry
Maybe it's something about this idea that the work doesn't care about what function is doing it. Maybe it's simply I'm going to start asking that question what problem are we trying to solve? I don't know what it is, but I know that if you don't take some action from this, the value that you get will be directly will be significantly reduced.

00:37:11:17 - 00:37:19:07
Kevin Eikenberry
Guys, thank you so much. I had such a great time with you. I hope that you feel the same. And, thanks so much for being here.

00:37:19:09 - 00:37:21:01
Nelson Repenning
Thank you Kevin, really appreciate it.

00:37:21:03 - 00:37:22:22
Don Kieffer
Thanks. Kevin had a lot of fun.

00:37:23:00 - 00:37:39:22
Kevin Eikenberry
And hopefully it was fun everybody. And if you found this valuable, guess what? There's a whole lot more in the archive. But you may not go back, but you can come back next week. And the way to come back next week is make sure you subscribe wherever you're watching or listening from, so you don't miss any future episodes.

00:37:39:22 - 00:37:48:01
Kevin Eikenberry
By the way, tell somebody else to join us as well. Do those things, and I'll be back next week with another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.