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:
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How Nelson and Don each earned their very first dollar
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Why early childhood experiences shape lifelong money habits
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Practical ways parents can teach kids about money today
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The surprising paths that led both professors into higher education
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How a chance meeting at Harley-Davidson sparked a 30-year collaboration
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Why fixing knowledge work is harder than fixing factory work
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The origin story behind their new book and why it finally came together
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What teaching leaders revealed about how people actually learn
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Why improving work makes companies more profitable and people happier
Top 3 Takeaways
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Improving work isn’t about grinding harder — it’s about designing systems that allow people to succeed.
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Kids learn more from watching how adults handle money than from any formal lesson.
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Long-term collaboration thrives when partners bring different strengths but share the same mission.
Notable Quotes
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“If you want better results, you don’t fix the people — you fix the work.”
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“Kids learn about money by seeing how you treat it, not by what you tell them.”
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“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"
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