This isn’t a gap you can fill by assigning it to someone; it requires a distinct capability that most operational leaders were never trained to develop.
Someone asked me recently what happens to the operating model after I leave.
It was a fair question. And the honest answer is: it depends on whether anyone owns it.
Not owns it in the sense of having it on an org chart. Owns it in the sense of watching how it performs, catching the drift before it compounds, and adjusting when the business changes around it.
I’ve written before on LinkedIn about the absence of firm-wide operational ownership in complex organisations, and the inevitable future problems that will accumulate when no one is accountable for how the whole thing connects. This piece is about something more specific, not just whether someone owns it, but whether anyone has the capability to steward it properly over time.
The gap I kept seeing
I spent years inside a complex global organisation where individual functions were being optimised, sometimes well. Processes were improved. Teams were capable. Investment was being made. But no one was accountable across the whole thing. So the flow never quite happened. The gains inside functions didn’t translate into gains across the whole organisation.
At the time, I understood this as an ownership problem. But the question I’ve been sitting with since is, even if someone had been given that accountability, would they have known what to do with it?
The operating model in most organisations wasn’t designed. It evolved, accumulated, and got patched as the business grew. And it kept evolving, without anyone watching. And so, the model drifts and friction compounds. By the time it becomes impossible to ignore, the gap between where the model is and where it needs to be to execute on the strategy effectively is significant.
Diagnosing that gap, and knowing how to close it, is not a generic operational skill. It requires a specific kind of thinking. It requires the ability to read how a model is performing as a whole, to identify where structure, process, and incentives are working against each other, and to redesign deliberately rather than patch reactively. Most operational leaders are trained to run functions, manage delivery, and fix what breaks. That is not the same thing.
A conversation that’s starting to happen
I’ve recently joined StrategyXF, a community focused on strategic execution as a C-suite priority. The discussions there reflect a belief that complex organisations require an owner for strategic execution, broadly, if it’s going to be successful.
But within that conversation, there is a more specific gap. Strategic execution requires a functioning operating model and operational infrastructure. And a functioning operating model requires ongoing stewardship, not just good design at a point in time. The two are connected, but they are not the same argument. You can build an execution office and still have an operating model that is quietly drifting beneath it.
The stewardship gap is its own problem, and it requires its own solution.
Why this is becoming more urgent
This gap has always existed. But two things are making it harder to ignore.
The first is the pace of organisational change. Businesses are restructuring more frequently, acquiring and integrating, shifting strategy in response to market pressure. Every one of those changes lands on the operating model. If no one is watching how the model absorbs those changes, the drift accelerates.
The second is AI. Organisations are making significant investments in AI, and many are finding that the returns are disappointing. The reason, more often than not, is not the technology. It is the operating model that the technology is being asked to work within. Unclear ownership, fragmented processes, misaligned incentives, and undocumented ways of working don’t disappear when you introduce AI. They become more visible and more costly. As AI continues to change the pace at which businesses need to adapt, the need for someone who can monitor the model and make proactive adjustments, rather than waiting for problems to surface, is only going to grow. Changes aren’t going to be periodic; they are going to be ongoing from here on out.
What the answer might look like
I don’t think the solution is simply creating a new role, though accountability matters. The more fundamental need is building the capability to do this properly, inside organisations, with people who understand both the diagnostic work and the design work, and who can apply that thinking continuously rather than episodically.
I’m currently developing thinking around what that capability looks like in practice, and how organisations can build it rather than rent it indefinitely. It’s early, but the direction is clear: this needs to be treated as a distinct discipline, not an add-on to an existing operational role.
If you’ve been inside an organisation where this gap showed up, I’d be interested to hear what it looked like from where you were sitting.
And for COOs and chiefs of staff carrying this kind of accountability: is this a gap you’re thinking about, actively trying to close, or one you’re managing around?