The Operating Model Is the Strategy

I have seen well-argued technology strategies fail to change anything, and modest ones reshape an organisation. The difference was rarely the quality of the thinking. It was whether the operating model — how work is funded, owned, staffed and decided — was aligned with the strategy or quietly working against it.

An operating model is the set of standing arrangements that determine behaviour when no one is looking: who owns a platform, how funding flows, where decisions are made, how teams are held accountable. Strategy sets direction, but people respond to incentives and structures. When those pull the other way, the strategy is simply overruled in a thousand small decisions.

Design the machine, not just the map

This is why I spend as much time on operating models as on strategy itself. Naming clear owners for platforms and data. Aligning funding with the outcomes leadership actually wants. Placing decisions with the people closest to the work. It is unglamorous design, but it is what turns intent into behaviour.

The practical test is simple. If your strategy requires people to act against how they are funded, measured and organised, the strategy will lose. Getting the operating model right first is what makes everything downstream — including measurement — possible.