Insights

Twenty years of practical thinking on complexity, operational excellence and how service organisations are managed. New articles, podcasts and the newsletter are on alexmcdonnell.com.

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The 4 Root Causes of Poor Effectiveness and Efficiency in Service and & Knowledge-Work Organisations (S&KWO) (March 2022)
Entanglement: The Core Driver of Frustration and Poor Productivity in Service and Knowledge-Work Organisations! (December 2022)
Complexity, Simplicity and Simplexity in Organisations (November 2023)

Complexity and simplicity

Minimising High-Growth Complexity
November 2023
Cultivating a Culture of Simplicity & Learning
November 2023
Navigating Complexity: Our Approach to Achieving High Performance
November 2023
Complexity, Simplicity and Simplexity in Organisations
November 2023
Six Simple Rules How Middle Managers & SIPOCs Can Simplify Unnecessary Complexity.
November 2023
The Organisational Big Bang
November 2023
Simplification Through Commitment
September 2023
Complexity Is Not Doing The Simple Things Well
September 2023
Why Todays Problems Often Come from YesterdaysSolutions……..and How to Break that Vicious Circle!
September 2023
Entanglement: The Core Driver of Frustration and Poor Productivity in Service and Knowledge-Work Organisations!
December 2022
Ryanair: When Complex Adaptive Systems bite back!
December 2020

Operational excellence and Lean

Orchestrating for Excellence
November 2023
Covey’s 4DX Framework and Operational Excellence
November 2023
The Indispensable Role of the Chief Operating Officer in Driving Operational Excellence
October 2023
Solving Problems: A Paradigm Shift from Excuses to Excellence
October 2023
The Imperative of Strategy Deployment in Achieving Operational Excellence
October 2023
How Operational Excellence Empowers People to Make Better Decisions
September 2023
The Tangible Benefits of Operational Excellence
September 2023
Why Service & Knowledge-Work Teams are “Pre-Lean” and Can Therefore Quickly Double Their Productivity or better!
June 2021
Why TPS is not “Lean for The Masses” ….hint, the answer is in the name!
December 2020
When Fixing What’s Broken Doesn’t Work
December 2020
What is Lean Enterprise Excellence & Operational Excellence
December 2020
Transforming Lean: Is Leans Roots in Japanese Religion and Culture holding it back?
December 2020
Why “Cause” beats “Urgency” every time.
December 2020

Process and collaboration

Confusing “Getting Things Done” with “Executing Well”
October 2023
Why Many Organisations Lack Formal Processes
October 2023
SIPOC + CLOU = Game Changer
September 2023
Why Actively Managed Processes Tame Complexity and Empower People.
September 2023
Collaborative Management and the “Planned Percent Complete” KPI
June 2021
Joined-Up Thinking and the “Germ Theory of Management”
December 2020

Management and leadership

First, Capture the Hearts and Minds of Your Workforce.
November 2023
When Employees Are Open With Each Other, But Not Management
November 2023
The Case of Reluctant Managers
October 2023
The Futility of Planning for Certainty in an Uncertain World
August 2023
The Pitfalls of Being a Results-Driven Organisation.
August 2023
Team Leaders Without Training?: Just Dodgem!
March 2022
Without Substantiated Reasons, Can Managers Really Ask for More?
March 2022
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
December 2020
Confusing Common Practices with Best Practices
December 2020
Ryanair: A Lesson for Leaders, Managers, Unions and Society
December 2020

Measuring service performance

Videos

Short explainers from the Expertivity team: Active HR Planning; Beyond Cooperation: Structured Collaboration; and Taming Complexity to Unlock Your Organisation’s Full Potential. They load from YouTube only when you press play.

New articles and practical tools on execution, complexity and collaboration, sent occasionally. It is the same newsletter as alexmcdonnell.com.