For founders and leaders of growing and complex organisations
What if your organisation worked right first time?
Most organisations are never designed. They grow one reasonable decision at a time, like a jigsaw with no picture on the box. Alex and his team help leaders see how the pieces should fit, and then help them make it happen.
More than four decades of management practice · More than seventy organisations · Typically 20–40% higher productivity
The problem
Good people. Good parts. An organisation that doesn’t fit together.
You fix one problem and another appears somewhere else. Decisions stall between functions. Your best people spend their days working around the organisation instead of improving it.
It isn’t a people problem. Your products are designed. Your systems are planned. Your strategy is thought through. The organisation that has to deliver them usually just grew. Alex calls the accumulating cost operational debt, and fixing problems one at a time only adds to it.
01
Unnecessary work
People check, recheck and work around problems. It eats time and does nothing for the customer.
02
Slow execution
Decisions and work queue between functions because nobody owns the complete end-to-end result.
03
Poor experiences
Customers and employees fall into the gaps between the parts, even when each part meets its own measures.
04
Excessive cost
Every workaround adds cost: more managers, more systems, more checks. Before long it’s just how things are.
05
Fragile growth
When you grow or acquire, the weaknesses grow too.
Capable people shouldn’t have to compensate for an organisation nobody designed.
Sound familiar? See what people usually tell us →
What changes
An organisation that works right first time, and keeps working as it grows.
When the people running connected parts of the business work from the same picture and decide together, the organisation starts to work as one.
01 / For your customers
No more gaps
Customers get what they were promised, first time, without chasing it across departments.
02 / For your people
Work that flows
Less rework and fewer workarounds. Handoffs agreed in advance, so people spend their time on work that matters.
03 / For your leaders
Faster decisions
Decisions made once, by the right people together, instead of escalated and revisited.
04 / For the business
Easier growth
Grow, acquire or adopt AI without the organisation becoming harder to run.
Your guide
Alex has been where you are.
He has built, led and fixed organisations himself, and knows how hard it is to change one from the inside while still running it.
Senior roles at Ericsson, where he helped set up its original software development centre, and at Dell and Eircom. Founded and scaled several businesses, starting with Technodisc in 1984. Master practitioner in Lean operational excellence and organisational design, with an MSc in Strategic Quality Management and an MBA from the University of Limerick, where the research behind BEC began.
Years of management practice
40+
Building, leading and improving organisations from the inside, including more than 20 years as a consultant.
Organisations improved
70+
Technology, healthcare, government and financial services.
Productivity gain
20–40%
The typical productivity gain across his programmes.
How it works
From a conversation to lasting change.
Whatever brought you here, the path is usually much the same, and it starts with a conversation.
01
Talk it through
A free half-hour conversation about what you’re seeing and what you’d like to change. No preparation needed.
02
Fix what can’t wait
Some problems need attention now. We’ll help you pick those and deal with them quickly, to ease the pressure.
03
Find what’s behind it
When the same problems keep appearing, something more fundamental is usually driving them. The free Business Execution Canvas Diagnostic shows which underlying causes sit behind which symptoms, in about 15 minutes per person. See a sample report →
04
Build it right first time
Alex and his team work alongside yours to tackle the underlying causes until the new way of working is in place. Then you measure again to see the progress, and keep revisiting it as things change.
Steps 3 and 4 follow the Business Execution Canvas®. What is the Business Execution Canvas? ↗
The method behind the work
Structured Collaboration.
Alex developed Structured Collaboration and the Business Execution Canvas® from his work inside more than seventy organisations. The method, the free tools, the diagnostic and the courses have their own home.
The path to scalable growth
From where you are today to growth that lasts.
Every organisation is at a different point. Alex and his team help you move from one stage to the next, at a pace that suits you.
Direction
→ Focused
Set the ambition, and understand what it will take to get there.
Organisation
→ Aligned and joined up
Design how the work, roles and decisions fit together.
Execution
→ Higher performance
Line up people, work and resources to deliver what matters most.
Operational excellence
→ Ready to scale
Create steady flow, enough capacity and consistent results.
Scalable performance
→ Growth that lasts
Grow with control and agility: more customers and more value, without more complexity.
What it adds up to: higher productivity · better outcomes for customers · faster, more effective growth · stronger internal capability · a more resilient future.
Where are you on the path?
Growing or starting out? Get Direction and Organisation right first →
Established and finding it hard to get things done? Fix Execution for good →
The latest book · the complete blueprint
Who Designed Your Organisation?
How to build an organisation that works right first time: Concurrent Management, the practice behind BEC.
Insights · Newsletter
Ideas for building organisations that work right first time.
Prefer LinkedIn? Follow and read past editions there →
Start the conversation
Don’t let today’s organisation become the specification for tomorrow’s.
Every month without a picture adds more operational debt. Whatever you’re facing, the first step is a conversation.