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Breaking Logjams in Knowledge Work
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Breaking Logjams in Knowledge Work

by Nelson Repenning, Sheila Dodge, Don Kieffer
October 2018
Intermediate to advanced
27 pages
26m
English
MIT Sloan Management Review

Overview


Despite the well-documented costs of overload, many leaders still think organizations thrive under pressure. They have a lot to learn from manufacturing, where managers have adopted a “pull” system to manage task flow, improving productivity and performance. This concept can be used to prevent overload in knowledge work, too. And “visual management” techniques make it easier to apply pull thinking to a portfolio of projects by rendering nonphysical tasks tangible. Two recent changes at the Broad Institute, an MIT-affiliated biomedical and genomic research center, illustrate how.

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 53863MIT60120