The Discipline That Makes Strategy Deliverable
Operational design is the often under looked discipline that makes or breaks success.
Strategy sets direction.
Operational design determines whether that direction can be sustained.
In my experience, organisations struggle because the system intended to deliver that ambition has not been deliberately designed. It’s not that the ambition was flawed.
It’s often that four things are:
Decision rights are unclear
Governance exists but does not enable.
Funding, prioritisation and outcomes are loosely connected.
Control mechanisms either constrain pace or fail to provide confidence.
Over time the impact (and friction levels) accumulates. Delivery becomes harder than it should be. Leaders spend energy navigating ambiguity rather than making purposeful decisions.
Operational design is the discipline that addresses this. It’s not an abstract exercise, it’s a practical leadership responsibility that is often ignored, or sometimes placed firmly in the ‘too difficult / too uncomfortable’ bucket.
Fundamental questions require answering for the organisation to thrive:
Who is genuinely accountable for what?
How are priorities translated into funded, deliverable activity?
Where do decisions sit and are they taken at the right level?
Does governance support judgement, or replace it?
Do control and assurance mechanisms build confidence, or create drag?
These questions sit at the intersection of governance, structure, finance, capability and culture. And they determine whether strategy becomes operational reality.
Well-designed operational systems share common characteristics. They are coherent. Their structures, controls and performance mechanisms reinforce one another. They are proportionate; strong enough to provide assurance, light enough to allow pace. And (critically) they are understood by those who work within them.
When this coherence is present, the shift is tangible, felt and seen in the organisation, adding confidence internally and externally.
Delivery accelerates.
Risk becomes visible and manageable.
Accountability feels clearer.
Leadership conversations become more focused and less defensive.
Operational design is about removing unnecessary complexity and making intentional choices about how the organisation works. Badly done it’s purely adding process, increasing levels of frustration or disengagement, and slowing things down.
When it is done well, it is rarely noticed. But it is the difference between organisations that are perpetually reacting and those that deliver with steadiness and intent. It’s the feeling of ‘it just works’
For me, operational design is not a supporting activity to strategy. It is the thing that makes strategy deliverable.