Visual Management for Competitive Advantage: MIT’s Approach to Efficient and Agile Work
Visual Management for Competitive Advantage: MIT’s Approach to Efficient and Agile Work
| Course Dates | Format | Duration | Time Commitment | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 22-24, 2025 | Live Online | 3 days | 5 hours/day | $4,700 |
Tracks
Technology and Operations
Certificate Credits
2.0 EEUs
Topics
- Operations
- Organizations & Leadership
- Systems Thinking
Course Highlights
- Provides practical tools and methods for sustainable improvement efforts of any scale, in any industry, and in any function
- Imparts a fundamental understanding of how visual management can help you find and fix issues in workflow, make improvements in real time, and create competitive advantage
- Offers personalized feedback on a current "headache" you're facing in your organization and an action plan you can implement immediately
- Confers a certificate of course completion from the MIT Sloan School of Management
Featured content
Why attend Visual Management for Competitive Advantage?
This leadership course helps executives and managers understand how continuous improvement strategies, sustained over a long period of time, affect core business metrics and business development strategy, and contribute to the success of the organization. As a participant in this course, you’ll gain a fundamental understanding of how visual management—specifically Dynamic Work Design—can help you find and fix issues in workflow, make improvements in real time, and create competitive advantage.
Dynamic Work Design was co-created by Nelson Repenning and Don Keiffer after a combined 20+ years of integrated industry practice and academic investigation, and further refined with insights and expertise provided by Sheila Dodge. This method leverages and builds on familiar process improvement techniques with which you may be familiar, including Lean Six Sigma, Agile, PDCA cycles, Kanban, and others, adapting and applying them to knowledge work and smart work design. You will:
- Learn how to implement this technique in your own organization directly from two of its creators
- Discover how the process of visual management can help you identify the value-added elements of your own work and that of your organization
- Identify opportunities for improving and get started based on a framework of principles and methods
Bring a current “headache” you’re facing in your organization to workshop and receive personalized feedback on an action plan you can implement immediately. You will leave this senior leadership course with practical real-world examples and an action plan that focuses on one simple (yet impactful) problem to solve over twelve months. Ultimately this will set the foundation for making additional incremental (and feasible) operational improvements and savings within your organization.
Course experience
Built on a foundation of highly adaptable principles and methods called Dynamic Work Design, this senior leadership course provides practical tools and methods for sustainable improvement efforts of any scale, in any industry, and in any function.
Proceeding from principles, not practices, is a key to sustainable change, allowing integration with current culture and processes while delivering fast results with little overhead, training, or major initiatives. You will discover how the process of visual management can help you identify the value-added elements of your own work and that of your organization. You will be able to identify opportunities for improving and get started based on a framework of principles and methods.
The method has proven to work in businesses as diverse as oil/gas, DNA sequencing, and engineering/innovation and works at the scale of discrete problems or organizational-wide strategic efforts. Improvement begins to happen in rapid and natural ways; results begin showing up almost immediately.
Learn more about the in-person course experience.
We do not recommend this course if you have already completed Business Process Design for Strategic Management, unless you are seeking a refresher of the content.
Applying to the course
We accept enrollments until the offering reaches capacity, at which point we will maintain a waitlist. Many of the courses fill up several weeks in advance, so we advise that you enroll as early as possible to secure your seat.
You can begin the application process by using the red 'Enroll Now' bar at the bottom of the screen.
Health and Safety
See our on campus healthy and safety policies.
Have questions?
Contact us if you would like to speak with a program director or visit our Frequently Asked Questions page for answers to common questions about our courses.
Upon successful completion of your course, you will earn a certificate of completion from the MIT Sloan School of Management. This course may also count toward MIT Sloan Executive Certificate requirements.
The main purpose of this program is two-fold
- To help you understand how continuous improvement strategies, sustained over a long period of time, affect core business metrics and contribute to the success of the organization, from bottom-up and top-down perspectives
- To change how you see work and your own role as a leader in the culture of improvement
If you ever wondered what Dynamic Work Design would look like in one picture...
This program will enable you to
- Understand the principles and approaches that drive improvement; and apply them in all areas in the context of a particular company, thus creating a tangible culture of continuous improvement
- Implement improvement naturally in your everyday work, not from a prescribed list, but from a deep personal understanding of the principles
- Recognize successful improvement initiatives already in place and build on them
- Identify the true value-added aspects of work performed by individual workers and the entire organization
- Ensure that business targets and improvement strategies are tightly linked at every level
- Develop inquiry and evidence-based problem-solving skills for individuals and organizations
- Transform from “controller” to “enabler” by leveraging the relationship between designing the work well and the engagement of employees that follows
- Generate “pull” from within the organization for new methods of work
- Implement “Visual Management”—a technique that makes problems visible so that they can be addressed constructively
- Not just remove defects, but to design work correctly from the beginning
Sample Schedule—Subject to Change
The course is intended for executives, senior managers, and leaders from every sector.
Managers at any level of responsibility will benefit from this program, but it's the senior leadership that should be able to embrace and champion the principles of improvement for the benefit of the entire organization.
Here are some indicators that this program will be of value:
- An organization's need for improvement is greater than its ability to deliver it
- Company executives are drowning in data, emails, and meetings, and suffering under the weight of a large number of activities and initiatives, many of which are not focused on the important issues
- Management behavior doesn’t change much or is actively resistant to improvement
- Improvement strategies are not integrated into the company's work beyond that of the improvement department
- There is lack of clear understanding how improvement methodologies and value-add apply to executives, knowledge workers, and technical and administrative staff in non-factory settings
We do not recommend this program to past participants of "Business Process Design for Strategic Management" unless you are looking for a refresher.
| Course Dates | Format | Duration | Time Commitment | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 22-24, 2025 | Live Online | 3 days | 5 hours/day | $4,700 |
Tracks
Technology and Operations
Certificate Credits
2.0 EEUs
Topics
- Operations
- Organizations & Leadership
- Systems Thinking