Why Your Organization Is Busy But Stuck: How Operating Model Misalignment Shows Up in Everyday Work
Your operating model defines how teams prioritize, make decisions, and deliver value. But what happens when different parts of the company operate according to different and sometimes conflicting models?
The result is typically confusion, redundancy, inertia, and transformation efforts that stall before they ever gain traction. And it happens more often than you’d think.
We've seen this play out time and again: One part of the organization adopts agile practices while another remains bound to stage-gate project management. Some leaders drive toward product-centric delivery, while others cling to functional silos. This leads to mixed messages, misaligned incentives, and a lot of sideways energy.
This misalignment is an often-overlooked aspect of operating model health, one that quietly erodes progress and blocks transformation.
In this article, we’ll unpack the symptoms of a fragmented operating model, explore how and why these fractures emerge, and examine the real risks they pose to strategy, culture, and customer experience.
We’ll also offer a path forward through Operating Model Clarity™. What it looks like, why it matters now more than ever, and how to begin building it, even if you’re not sure where to start.
The Symptoms of Operating Model Fragmentation
Does the idea of having two operating models sound outlandish to you? Maybe you’re thinking, “How could it be possible to have two op models when we can barely articulate one?”
We know it seems unlikely, but this sort of “hybrid model” isn’t uncommon when you’re working to adopt new tech and, as a result, new ways of working. Think of this as the ultimate symptom of growing pains.
If you’re dealing with multiple or conflicting operating models, it probably looks like this:
Competing Priorities: Teams feel like they’re being pulled in opposite directions. Strategy says one thing, but delivery processes and incentives say another.
Siloed Execution: Different departments follow different rules. Engineering follows agile, while marketing uses rigid approval workflows. Coordination is painful and slow.
Confusion About Who Owns What: Without a singular operating model, decision-making becomes political, accountability is unclear, and teams second-guess ownership.
Fiefdoms and Workarounds: Leaders build shadow processes or tools to “just get it done,” leading to redundancy, inefficiency, and even more fragmentation.Inconsistent Customer Experience: When delivery models don’t align across teams, customers feel the disjointedness in everything from service interactions to product features.
In short, when there’s no shared way of working, transformation becomes fragmented. People are busy, but value doesn’t flow.
How It Happens
Competing operating models don’t appear overnight. They evolve over time, often with good intentions.
Perhaps a single team pilots agile and sees early success, so they roll it out locally without a broader organizational mandate. Maybe a new executive brings in tools and processes that clash with existing workflows. Or perhaps legacy systems and structures persist in heavily regulated parts of the business, while adjacent teams try to modernize.
Each of these efforts might seem isolated, even harmless. But over time, they result in Operating Model Debt—the compounding cost of continuing to run your business on outdated structures that weren’t designed for speed, customer connection, or measurable business impact.
The Risks of a Fractured Operating Model
Misaligned operating models don't just slow things down—they actively erode trust, morale, and progress. You’ll start to see things like:
Strategic Drift: With no unified way of working, execution detaches from strategy. Teams focus on local optimization instead of enterprise outcomes.
Wasted Resources: Redundant tools, duplicative processes, and missed handoffs cost time and money.
Change Fatigue: When teams are asked to shift gears repeatedly without visible results, skepticism builds.
Talent Retention Struggles: Top performers, especially in tech, want to work in environments with aligned missions, clear expectations, and modern workflows. Fractured models send them running.
What we’re ultimately talking about is a stalled transformation.
Without a cohesive model, even the best strategic vision fails to materialize. Leaders lose credibility as change initiatives deliver inconsistent results or quietly fade away. You begin to experience Transformation Theater: Surface-level changes that give the illusion of progress, but eventually leave stakeholders wondering why transformation efforts haven't translated into tangible results.
Why Alignment Matters
The goal isn’t to enforce identical processes across every function. It’s to ensure alignment on how decisions are made, how value is defined, and how work gets done.
In other words, the goal is Operating Model Clarity™: An intentional, capability-focused, customer-aligned approach designed specifically to deliver tangible, measurable results.
It doesn’t mean everyone uses the same agile framework or toolset. It means:
Teams understand the why behind how work flows.
Leaders align on shared outcomes, not just activity.
Business and tech operate as one system, not two camps.
Customers experience your organization as coherent not chaotic.
When that clarity is missing, even the best tools and talent can’t reach their full potential.
What Operating Model Clarity Looks Like in Action
Organizations that achieve alignment across the operating model experience a step-change in performance. Here’s what that looks like:
Unified Strategic Priorities: Everyone across functions, regions, and levels understands the outcomes that matter (rather than obsessing over outputs).
Fewer Bottlenecks: Teams move with autonomy, making decisions closer to the customer.
More Value, Faster: Instead of long waits and late surprises, value flows in smaller, continuous increments.
Higher Confidence: Leaders see the connection between transformation efforts and business results, and give teams space to take calculated risks.Cohesive Culture: Silos start to fall. Teams share language, tools, and a sense of shared ownership.
This is what we mean by Operating Model Clarity™. It’s not a new org chart or process map. It’s a rewiring of how your organization creates value, and for whom.
Where to Start
Transformation isn’t just about what you change. It’s about how many versions of the "truth" you let persist inside your org.
To start moving toward clarity:
Make the implicit explicit: Every organization has an operating model, whether it’s documented or not. Start by surfacing how decisions are made, how constrained resources are prioritized, how value is delivered, and where the inconsistencies lie.
Name the friction: Don’t avoid the pain points, diagnose them. Where are teams out of sync? Where does work slow down or break down?
Define shared outcomes: Align teams across functions and delivery models with a unified view of the customer and the business value you're trying to deliver.
Prioritize capability-building: Tools alone don’t solve fragmentation. Focus on building leadership and team capabilities that support aligned, modern delivery.
Embed change: Alignment isn’t a one-off workshop, it’s a muscle you build. Embed practices, coaching, and reinforcement into the day-to-day fabric of work.
To get the benefits of agility, speed, and customer centricity, your organization needs more than isolated initiatives or pockets of change. You need a shared operating model that drives coherence across the enterprise.
That’s what Operating Model Clarity delivers. That’s what makes transformation stick.