5 steps to break the cycle of organizational chaos

Does this sound familiar: cycles of urgent demands, workarounds, constant reactivity, tools that don’t do what they’re supposed to. Employees spend more of their time handling what’s pressing rather than what’s essential.

That’s the focus of a new framework and book from Donald Keifer and Nelson Repenning, veterans of organizational management at Harley-Davison and MIT, respectively. In their new book, “There’s Got To Be A Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work,” they aim to eradicate enervating workflow cul-de-sacs that aren’t just huge time sucks, they result in stress, inefficiency, and a widening gap between promises and performance. 

Such things have a real cost. A forthcoming study by Freshworks found that complexities can cause employees to lose nearly a full day of work each week, with the frustration leading 60% of them to consider quitting as a result. 

Keifer and Repenning see a path forward out of the chaos with five principles of a framework they call “Dynamic Work Design”: solve the right problem, structure for discovery, connect the human chain, regulate for flow, and visualize the work. Together, these have yielded significant results in settings ranging from biotech labs and hospitals to oil refineries. 

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The results have been impressive. At the Broad Institute, they helped uncover and eliminate an overlooked bottleneck: an undersized machine on a production line. Once upgraded, throughput jumped. At BP, their framework helped fix a sclerotic payment process at a refinery. That effort launched a larger initiative that eventually saved the company more than a billion dollars. “And it all started with paying bills on time,” said Repenning.

Below, Keifer and Repenning describe how “Dynamic Work Design” helps organizations escape overload by focusing on workflow rather than individual performance. Their approach emphasizes starting small, understanding how work really happens on the ground, and designing systems that let everyone succeed—which naturally boosts both productivity and morale. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What sparked the idea for a new framework for the way work gets done?

Nelson Repenning: Don and I first met when I was a newly minted Ph.D. working on a National Science Foundation–funded project, but the turning point in our professional partnership came when we worked with BP, helping run their Operations Academy after the Texas City refinery explosion in 2005 and the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010. The company responded to the crises by issuing thousands of pages of standards and rules, a common occurrence when companies face a significant incident. From a psychological standpoint, this approach is never going to work. 

Donald Keifer: BP had thousands of pages of detailed bullets telling people precisely what to do. They hired enforcers from other companies to ensure compliance. You can’t tell 100,000 people to follow every bullet all the time, but they clearly needed to improve. 

Repenning: Instead, Don and I designed a different process, one focused on how people actually work rather than elaborate compliance theater. 

How does it work?

Our approach starts with discovery. See the problem firsthand. Walk the shop floor, talk to the people doing the work, and understand what they’re up against. Assume they’re trying to do the right thing, because they usually are. 

Then, pick a small piece of a big problem. Those minor problems are cracks in the wall of our assumptions about how work gets done. Don’t waste time on trivial things like office décor or party planning. Choose a core business challenge and focus on a manageable slice of it. Figure out what people have to do to push work through the system, then make an impact—say, a 30% improvement, not 1 or 2%. Do it fast, and keep it simple: paper, pencil, Post-its. No big budgets, no long timelines. Once you see what’s really happening and how to make it flow, you can replicate that learning across the organization.

And here’s the best part: When you fix the work, people enjoy their work more. Productivity doesn’t come from squeezing harder. It comes from making work flow smoothly.  

Big, top-down programs rarely work. They are expensive, sometimes cause harm, and seldom make a lasting difference. In big companies, leaders often drift too far from how work really happens. They look at spreadsheets, see the numbers, and respond by launching programs and training initiatives—what we used to call at Harley-Davidson “Another Fine Program.” (We didn’t actually say “fine” in private.) 

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What are the early warning signs that work systems are breaking down?

Keifer: The clearest warning sign is simply too much work in the system. Email boxes are full. Slack never stops pinging. Priorities are always changing. Everyone is overloaded. Teams are running on all cylinders. Then someone says, “Let’s just take on one more project.”

As the workload increases, delivery times start to stretch—not just for external products, but also for internal work. And they don’t just get longer; they become more unpredictable. When that happens, the customers of that work, whether inside or outside the company, get frustrated. They want results sooner, so they escalate the issue to their boss. The boss, trying to help, starts expediting the “important” stuff. Some work then moves through quickly, but everything else slows down. You end up with a long tail of late deliveries, as less urgent work gets stuck in the system. That constant expediting creates firefighting, which fuels a cycle of chaos.

I once asked a group of employees at a company how long it took to pay a typical invoice. They said 30 to 60 days. Then I asked how much actual human effort was involved. It turned out to be about 45 minutes spread across three or four people. That’s the real issue. So much work isn’t being done, it’s waiting to be done.  

Are these organizational problems primarily a byproduct of large companies, or do they also occur in smaller organizations?

Repenning: They definitely worsen as organizations scale, because communication and coordination needs increase exponentially. But even small organizations experience them, because the roots are psychological and are basically in how humans engage with work.

Take one of our core principles: regulate the flow—don't take on more work than you can do. I regularly violate that principle myself, and I'm an organization of one. Small groups can fall into firefighting mode just as easily—it's just easier to pull yourself back when you're one person instead of 100,000. But I think a lot of it's just rooted in how our psychology interacts with our modern, technology-enhanced world. There is a natural tendency to think you can squeeze in one more thing. 

How has technology changed the picture? Does it help or hurt?

Repenning: Both. Think about the archetype of a 1950s U.S. corporation, in which everyone works in the same building, surrounded by paper. Those piles of paper gave you visual cues. If the stack on your desk started to grow, you knew something was wrong. On an assembly line, it was the same. Things were either moving or they weren't. If something stopped, it was immediately apparent.

Today, technology has made us far more productive, but it also made our work invisible. Instead of stacks of paper, everything is buried in email inboxes, digital task lists, and project management tools. It's much harder to see what's moving, what's stuck, and where the system is overloaded.

Does the Dynamic Work Design approach work everywhere?

Repenning: The only places it doesn't work are organizations without people. Whether you're running a hospital, a bank, a tech company, or a refinery, the core issue is how humans engage with work.

Knowledge workers often resist, saying, “You can’t routinize my creativity.” But we’re not touching the 5% of your day that’s truly creative. We’re fixing the other 95%—the waiting, handoffs, and bottlenecks—that steal time away from the creative part.

Keiffer: I once observed surgery at Johns Hopkins. The surgeon asked if I was there to make his operations faster. I told him his surgery looked like a ballet. It was perfectly choreographed. I couldn’t improve that. What I could improve was everything around it: patients arriving on time, equipment ready, rooms prepped. When all that flows, the surgeon can do more surgeries. That’s the essence of Dynamic Work Design.

At a meta level, we’ve developed tools that break people’s natural habituation. They see things differently. Once you get that crack in the wall, light starts shining through. Things really take off.