Work with Alex
How Alex and his team can help
Whether you’re growing a business or making an established one more effective, efficient and easier to run, the starting point is the same.
Understand what your customers need and how your organisation really works. Then design how it should work, put it into practice, and keep adapting as things change.
Alex has spent his career improving organisations through Lean, operational excellence and organisational design. He and his team work with founders, leadership teams and boards as practitioner consultants, working alongside their people to deliver the change and lasting results, not just advice. Alex also speaks at conferences and teaches on university and executive programmes.
What people tell us
Most conversations start with something like this.
If any of these sound familiar, book a free half-hour and we’ll talk it through. You don’t need to have the answers worked out first.
Seeing what’s really going on
- “We know what isn’t working, but we’re just not sure where to start.”
- “We can see the symptoms everywhere, but we suspect the real cause is somewhere less obvious. We’re tired of firefighting, and we’d like to fix things so they stay fixed.”
- “Everyone always seems busy, but we’re not getting any traction. I’d love to understand what people are actually doing, and why.”
Where the time really goes
- “I’ve heard that maybe only 40% of what we do really adds value. I can believe it, but working out which 40% is the hard part.”
- “Someone told me only 20% of our work is driven by our customers, and 80% we create ourselves. I found that hard to believe, but on reflection, I can see it.”
- “We record plenty of time, but we can’t see what it tells us about the value we deliver.”
- “We don’t really have good measures of productivity.”
How the organisation is set up
- “Every time we fix one thing, something else breaks.” Finding it hard to get things done →
- “Our strategy makes sense at the top, but it gets lost by the time it reaches the teams.”
- “We’re very departmental, and things fall between the teams.”
- “We have our values on the wall, but there’s a gap between the organisation we want to be and the one we actually are.”
Managing the work day to day
- “Workarounds get noticed more than fixing things properly.”
- “Our managers were never really shown how to manage the work, so they improvise.”
- “Our backlog keeps growing and we can’t see a way through it.”
- “Planning and scheduling aren’t joined up, so we’re losing flexibility and productivity.”
- “When we look back, most of our service drops were avoidable.”
The commercial pressures
- “On some projects we make 20%, on others we lose 20%. We need far more consistency.”
- “It takes far too long to get proposals out, and it puts the whole organisation under pressure.”
- “Our estimates aren’t as reliable as they need to be, and they depend on one or two key people.”
Where you’re heading
- “We’re growing fast and I don’t want to repeat other people’s mistakes.” Growing and scaling a business →
- “Everyone’s talking about AI. We’re not sure where it fits for us.”
- “We’ve tried improvement programmes before, or made a good start, but it hasn’t stuck.”
- “We’re not sure what government supports are available for our growth and development plans.” Government supports for Irish businesses →
How it works
From a conversation to lasting change.
Whatever brought you here, the path is usually much the same.
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, to ease the pressure and give everyone some breathing space. We’ll help you pick those and deal with them quickly.
03
Find what’s behind it
When the same kinds of problems keep appearing, there’s usually something more fundamental driving them. Our free diagnostic looks at the organisation as a whole: how it understands its customers, shares that understanding, designs its work, runs it day to day and adapts. It shows which underlying causes sit behind which of the symptoms you’re seeing. The people involved spend about 15 minutes each. See a sample report ↗
04
Build it right first time
After more than 20 years of consulting and more than 70 organisations, one lesson stands out: it’s far better to build things right than to spend years fixing them. That’s what we’re here to help with. Alex and his team work alongside yours to tackle the underlying causes, until the new way of working is in place and the problems stop coming back. Then you measure again to see your progress and the improvements achieved, and then again, because the picture is never finished. The organisations that improve fastest are the ones that revisit it most often.
Steps 3 and 4 follow the Business Execution Canvas®. What is the Business Execution Canvas? ↗
How the work is done
A conversation first, then a plan that suits you.
Alex and his team work through Expertivity, the consulting business he co-founded, together with a small network of associates. Anything beyond the first conversation is agreed with you, and quoted, before it starts.
Government supports for Irish businesses
If you’re based in Ireland, it helps to be clear first on where you want the business to get to. We can help you shape that into a practical plan. With a clear plan, your conversation with Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland or your Local Enterprise Office becomes much easier: your adviser can quickly see where you are, where you’re heading, and whether any of their supports could help. Enterprise Ireland’s capability development supports give a sense of what’s on offer. Alex and his team at Expertivity have advised and helped many clients through this process. Every support has its own eligibility criteria and is subject to approval, so the final word and advice always come from your agency adviser.
Start the conversation
The first step is a conversation.
or email alex@alexmcdonnell.com
For team engagements and programmes, work with Alex and the team at Expertivity
Speaking and teaching
For leadership teams, conferences and programmes.
Alex speaks to leadership teams and conferences about building organisations that work, and teaches as a guest lecturer on university and executive programmes.
Sessions draw on his years at Ericsson and Dell, his work with more than seventy client organisations, and the ideas in his books.