Published 1 February 2024 · Updated 11 October 2026
It depends on how different the new operating model is — but the thing that decides whether it lands is rarely the design. On the programs I’ve led, the model itself was the easy part. What the organisation did with it afterwards was the whole game.
The key tactic is change management: comms, champions, anticipating and mitigating resistance, educating and enabling people as they go.
The decision I would make again, and did: don’t try to design in detail how the new model will work at the start. Leave room for the people who are in those roles to work it out and, in doing so, own the change in their own space. When I’ve done that well, the operating model kept improving for months after we left. When I’ve handed over a fully specified model instead, it stopped improving the day we left.
Make sure the change strategy has structures that support experimentation and improvement. The operating model won’t be 100% right first go. People will need to adapt processes, try things, and adjust as they experience the new model’s dynamics.
Clarity around decision rights and accountabilities for the key outputs and outcomes of the operating model is an accelerator — arguably more than any communications plan. Ambiguity about who decides is what turns a design into a turf argument.
At the rail operator I worked with, six years across three roles, the leadership and culture program reporting to the CFO lifted engagement by 15% across 60 business units. It worked because the change was designed with the people who had to run it, not announced to them. The same principle applies to an operating model: the new structure is only real once the people inside it can explain, in their own words, why it looks the way it does.
Move at pace. Encourage adaptation towards the target model’s North Star. Focus on the key metrics and targets the model is meant to achieve. And make sure the people impacted by the change feel cared for — that is not softness, it is what buys you the second and third iterations you are going to need.
If you’re the accountable executive
- Publish the decision rights for the new model in the same document as the structure. If people can’t tell who decides what by the end of day one, the model isn’t finished.
- Fund the adaptation, not just the announcement. Budget and time for the first two rounds of process change, and say out loud that there will be two.
- Ask the people in the new roles what isn’t working yet, on a schedule, for the first two quarters. The answers are your implementation plan.