For leaders of existing organisations
Finding it hard to get things done?
You’ve fixed problem after problem and invested in new systems, yet new issues keep appearing. The business is getting harder to manage, and your people and your clients feel it. Instead of another patch, redesign how the parts fit together so the next fix is the last fix.
Does this sound familiar?
Does this sound familiar?
01
Your people check, recheck and work around problems. It eats time and does nothing for your customers.
02
Decisions and work wait between departments, because nobody owns the whole result from start to finish.
03
Customers and employees fall into the gaps between departments, even when each one is hitting its own targets.
04
Every workaround adds cost: more managers, more systems, more checks. Before long it’s just how things are.
05
Growth is making all of it worse, not better.
06
A major investment in a new system hasn’t delivered what was promised.
In the organisations Alex and his team have worked with, a large share of people’s time goes on working around complexity, chasing, checking and correcting, rather than on the work itself.
Why the fixes don’t stick
Why fixing problems one at a time doesn’t work
The problems are connected. Fix one part in isolation and the pressure moves somewhere else.
Many organisational problems arise not because expertise is missing, but because the right expertise enters decisions at different times. Alex calls this accumulating cost of how work really gets done operational debt.
The path to scalable growth
For established organisations, the work is usually in the middle steps.
Execution and Operational excellence are where the pressure shows. Fixing them for good often means going back to Organisation: how the work, roles and decisions fit together.
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.
Still growing fast? See how we help growing businesses →
Make the next fix the last fix.
The better way
Understand the business as it really works. Define what it genuinely needs to accomplish. Then decide which structures, processes, technologies and roles should be kept, redesigned or replaced. Redesign it right, once, instead of patching it again.
The question at the centre of it: “Who needs to make this decision together, and what information do they need to make it well?”
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’ve already tried.
02
Fix what can’t wait
Deal quickly with the problems that need attention now, to ease the pressure and give everyone some breathing space.
03
Find what’s behind it
The free Business Execution Canvas Diagnostic, starting with one team, shows which underlying causes sit behind the symptoms, in about 15 minutes per person.
04
Build it right first time
Redesign it right, once: Alex and his team work alongside yours to tackle the underlying causes, then measure again and keep revisiting it.
Steps 3 and 4 follow the Business Execution Canvas®. What is the Business Execution Canvas? ↗
Results
Proven in more than seventy organisations.
Alex and his team have led improvement programmes at more than seventy organisations across many sectors and sizes, typically raising productivity by 20–40%.
Who you’ll be working with
Experience from the inside.
Alex has held senior executive roles at Ericsson, Dell and Eircom, and has advised leadership teams across technology, healthcare, government and financial services.
At Eircom, Ireland’s national telecommunications company, he cut software testing costs by 30%, maintenance and support costs by 25% and desktop support costs by 35%, then led operational excellence across 4,500 staff as Director of Business Excellence.
He is a certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and completed MIT Sloan’s executive programme in Business Dynamics.
Further reading
Who Designed Your Organisation?
Who Designed Your Organisation? shows how founders and established organisations can reduce operational debt, improve execution and build the strength to grow.
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