Books & Practical Resources
Designing, building and managing the connected organisation of the future.
Books explain the thinking. The Business User Manual and supporting resources help leaders apply it by making clear what their organisation does, why it does it and how its parts are intended to work together.
The latest book · The complete blueprint
Who Designed Your Organisation?
How to Build an Organisation That Works Right First Time
Why do capable people spend so much time compensating for organisational problems—and how can leaders prevent those problems before they become embedded?
Who Designed Your Organisation? presents Concurrent Management: a practical blueprint for bringing together processes, operations, technology, information, people, finance, risk and change. Drawing on more than 50 years of experience, Alex McDonnell shows how founders and established organisations can reduce operational debt, improve execution and build the strength to grow.
“Building an effective organisation requires the people responsible for its connected parts to make connected decisions.”
Part I How businesses come to work the way they do
Part II Designing the business as a system
Part III Managing the business as one system
Part IV Managing a changing enterprise
Read it from beginning to end, use it as a reference, or take the fast track through the executive summary and highlighted passages.
The earlier book · Where the thinking began
The Future of Management Is Not Management
A Guide to Upgrading Management for the Modern Workforce
Most organisations still operate using 20th-century tools—org charts, siloed functions, control-based supervision—in a 21st-century world defined by complexity, interdependence and continuous change. This book introduces the Agile Business Execution Canvas® (ABEC), a structured, visual framework that replaces accidental collaboration with intentional design: clarity without micromanagement, autonomy without chaos, and alignment without bureaucracy.
Watch · The book in six minutes
The book, in six minutes.
Why organisations with well-designed parts still struggle to work as a whole, and what it takes to build one that works right first time.
Other Resources
Videos and practical material.
A growing collection exploring how to design, build and manage the connected organisation of the future through Concurrent Management and Structured Collaboration.
Start the conversation
What would the picture on your box look like?
Take the free diagnostic, or book a 30-minute call with Alex to talk it through.