A Risk Briefing on Over-Concentration and Continuity Under Change

Why this matters now

Across education, public services, and organisations more broadly, change is no longer episodic it is continuous.

Pathways shift, expectations evolve, partnerships realign, and outcomes that once felt stable are renegotiated.

Yet manypeople remain structured around a narrow set of dominant pathways or outcomes, creating hidden exposure when those anchors change.

The risk

Over-concentration occurs when a disproportionate share of time, effort, identity, or expectation becomes attached directly or indirectly to a single pathway, role, outcome, or dependency. When that anchor shifts or collapses, impact is rarely contained.

Over-concentration occurs when a disproportionate share of time, effort, identity, or expectation becomes attached directly or indirectly to a single pathway, role, outcome, or dependency

What appears later as disengagement, withdrawal, loss of continuity, or increased downstream demand often has its roots upstream, in how investment was structured long before disruption and occurred.

What’s often missed

Diversification (Investing share of time, effort, identity, or thought) can be misleading. Activity may appear spread across many areas while still being functionally dependent on one underlying anchor. Substitutes introduced after disruption frequently fail to restore continuity, not because support is absent, but because concentration existed beforehand.

The issue is not change itself, but single-point

exposure to change.

The HAPHE perspective

HAPHE provides a non-clinical, non-diagnostic risk-awareness lens that helps make concentration visible at individual, population, or organisational levels. Its focus is awareness rather than assessment: enabling people and systems to recognise where investment has become narrowly focused and to rebalance gradually, before disruption forces abrupt adjustment. HAPHE does not change behaviour; it changes the clarity with which investment risk is perceived behaviour adjusts downstream of that clarity.

Why awareness matters

Most over-concentration is unintentional and unseen.

Most over-concentration is unintentional and unseen.

Cognitive awareness and acknowledgement is vital. When awareness increases, individuals and systems can begin to reallocate time, effort, and cognitive resources across parallel or adjacent domains.

Cognitive awareness and acknowledgement is vital.

This reduces vulnerability, supports continuity, and limits cascade effects without lowering standards, ambition, or accountability.

How this is used

This briefing is intended to support early conversations, internal reflection, and shared language. It does not require monitoring individuals, collecting personal data, or introducing new interventions.

In practice, it is often used as a discussion lens in planning sessions, transition reviews, or exploratory strategy conversations.

A final note

This framework does not replace existing support, safeguarding, or change-management processes. It complements them by addressing exposure before impact, helping systems stay resilient as conditions evolve.

Developed by Shola Morgan, HAPHE through the HAPHE framework connecting for the good of the whole.