Intro

Nelson Repenning and Don Kieffer are longtime collaborators and professors at the MIT Sloan School of Management. With nearly 30 years of combined research, leadership experience, and hands-on work inside major organizations, they specialize in fixing broken systems, developing leaders, and helping teams operate at peak performance. They are co-authors of the new book There’s Got to Be a Better Way, a practical, field-tested guide to improving how people work.

On this episode we talk about:

• How Nelson and Don each earned their very first dollar

• Why early childhood experiences shape lifelong money habits

• Practical ways parents can teach kids about money today

• The surprising paths that led both professors into higher education

• How a chance meeting at Harley-Davidson sparked a 30-year collaboration

• Why fixing knowledge work is harder than fixing factory work

• The origin story behind their new book and why it finally came together

• What teaching leaders revealed about how people actually learn

• Why improving work makes companies more profitable and people happier

Top 3 Takeaways

1. Improving work isn’t about grinding harder — it’s about designing systems that allow people to succeed.

2. Kids learn more from watching how adults handle money than from any formal lesson.

3. Long-term collaboration thrives when partners bring different strengths but share the same mission.

Notable Quotes

• “If you want better results, you don’t fix the people — you fix the work.”

• “Kids learn about money by seeing how you treat it, not by what you tell them.”

• “The moment we started teaching our ideas, we realized how much more we had to learn.”

Purchase a Copy of "There's Got To Be a Better Way"

• https://www.amazon.com/Theres-Got-Be-Better-Way/dp/1541704622

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