A definition · Alex McDonnell
What is Concurrent Management?
Concurrent Management is a practical blueprint for bringing together processes, operations, technology, information, people, finance, risk and change, so that the right perspectives make important decisions together, while those choices can still be influenced.
Concurrent Management is the part of Structured Collaboration that applies to senior teams.
The term was introduced by Alex McDonnell in Who Designed Your Organisation? How to Build an Organisation That Works Right First Time.
Watch
Concurrent Management in six minutes.
Alex introduces the book behind the idea: why organisations with well-designed parts still struggle to work as a whole, and how bringing the right perspectives together early builds an organisation that works right first time.
Operational debt
The problem it solves
Many organisational problems arise not because expertise is absent, but because the necessary expertise enters decisions at different times.
Reasonable decisions can then compound into a business that is increasingly difficult and expensive to operate, manage and change. Alex calls this accumulating cost of how work really gets done operational debt.
01
Unnecessary work
Duplication, repeated checking, correction and manual intervention consume capacity without improving the outcome.
02
Slow execution
Decisions and work queue between functions because nobody owns the complete end-to-end result.
03
Poor experiences
Customers and employees encounter the gaps between the organisation’s parts, even when each part meets its own measures.
04
Excessive cost
Complexity adds management, technology, control and coordination costs that gradually become embedded.
05
Fragile growth
Growth and acquisition multiply weaknesses as well as strengths when the underlying operating system is unclear.
The central question
“Who needs to make this decision together, and what information do they need to make it well?”
“Building an effective organisation requires the people responsible for its connected parts to make connected decisions.”
The approach
How Concurrent Management works
01 / Understand
See the organisation as people experience it
Start with what customers and employees actually encounter, not with the organisation chart.
02 / Idealise
Define what is needed
Clarify the outcomes, functions and capabilities required before choosing familiar solutions.
03 / Design
Connect the expertise
Consider customer, operations, process, technology, people, data, finance and risk together.
04 / Learn
Let reality improve it
Use operational evidence to improve continuously and revisit assumptions when circumstances change.
The practical output
A Business User Manual
The Business User Manual is not a static procedure manual or a collection of process documents. It is the organisation’s evolving understanding of how the business is intended to work.
It makes clear
How the business is intended to work
- How it creates value
- The capabilities it depends upon
- How teams and functions connect
- How important decisions are made
- How external partners contribute
- How operational learning improves the system
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