Overview:
A leading organization, fresh off a successful revitalization and rebranding effort, faced significant operational inefficiencies threatening its growth. The organization's Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) grappled with siloed efforts, competing priorities, and a culture of blame, all of which stifled progress and productivity. We were brought in to help diagnose the systemic issues and design a scalable operational framework to overcome these challenges. For this intervention, we adopted a co-creative approach, integrating diagnostic research, iterative design, and lean principles.
This case illustrates our design-led approach to operations—where we apply design thinking to operational challenges that conventional optimization methods can't solve. By focusing on designing the connections between teams rather than just optimizing individual functions, we helped create a coherent system that could scale with growth.
Key Impacts:
- Holistic Diagnosis: Clear and comprehensive framing of the root problems, providing the organization with a shared understanding of the systemic issues that stifled efficiency.
- Successful pilot: A pilot initiative improved cross-functional collaboration on a core operational activity, bringing alignment to previously siloed teams.
- Scalability: The core strategy team independently scaled the operational framework to more than four other key activities.
- Cultural Shift: Renewed sense of trust and collaboration within the organization, along with a shift towards a mindset of continuous improvement.
The Challenge of Sustaining Growth
The organization had recently undergone a profound transformation, a revitalization of its brand and positioning in the market. While the new direction allowed the organization to capture more demand and reach a wider customer base, it also revealed a mounting operational burden.
The organization was experiencing what we call the Strategy-Operations Gap—a common pattern where strategic success creates operational strain that existing structures can't support. This challenge often emerges during periods of growth when systems designed for a smaller scale begin to fragment under new pressures.
This exposed several critical challenges:
- Departments struggled to manage the increased pressure while maintaining customer satisfaction, resulting in dysfunction across key areas.
- Competing priorities and cross-functional rivalries led to inefficiencies.
- A lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities deepened silos, further slowing progress.
The strategy team, led by the Chief Strategy Officer, found itself caught in a vicious organizational cycle. Too much time and energy were spent putting out fires — tackling urgent operational issues and temporary fixes, leaving little room for the strategic development needed for sustainable growth. This led to a recurring theme of low productivity, misaligned objectives, and a pervasive blame culture. Morale was low, and the organization seemed to be moving in circles without advancing.
Diagnosing the Problem
We were brought in to assist the Chief Strategy in assessing and addressing the situation. We began by conducting a systemic diagnostic phase, analyzing the recurring symptoms of dysfunction and the patterns that were reinforcing them. We discovered and analyzed a vicious feedback loop where urgent and short-term operational issues took priority over long-term development activities. Teams were working in silos, focusing on local optimizations rather than collaborative, cross-functional improvements. This localized focus exacerbated inefficiencies, as efforts to improve in one department were often counteracted by competing priorities in others.
Through this diagnostic work, we reframed the key design problem:
Key design problem: How could the organization foster alignment across functions, prioritize the right initiatives, and create a scalable operational framework to support sustainable growth?
Based on our diagnosis, we designed an intervention using our design-led methodology that focused on making visible and then redesigning the critical connections between interdependent activities. Unlike traditional process improvement that optimizes individual functions, this approach intentionally designs how parts of the organization work together as a coherent system.
Exploring the design solution space
To solve these challenges, we revolved our work around diagnostic research, ideation, and solution development. We ended up focusing our efforts around four core questions:
- How do we model a common cross-functional reference point for the operational reality of the organization?
- How can we detect the critical problems and collaborate on building new solutions?
- How do we prioritize execution to ensure sustainable and maximum productivity?
- How do we structure and support autonomous, yet interconnected, teams?
Our intervention began with a pilot focused on one of the organization’s core activity. We extended our team by adding key stakeholders from both the back-office and front-office: individuals with a broad view, for example program managers, and those closer to day-to-day operations, like operators. This collaborative team worked to develop a unified understanding of the end-to-end value stream, identifying bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement.
Design Note: A pivotal insight in our design process was recognizing that operational challenges are often connection problems rather than capability problems. By designing the interfaces between functions—not just optimizing the functions themselves—we create systems that can adapt to changing demands rather than breaking under pressure.
Implementation Design: Operational Excellence Pilot
At the core of the pilot was a value stream approach, inspired by the Scaled Agile Framework and lean methodologies. This approach aimed at improving collaboration between silos and optimizing the flow of activities across departments.
The goal was to enhance three key metrics:
- Customer experience quality,
- Employee experience quality,
- Time-to-market for new services.
We identified and addressed critical problems in the flow of value through the core activity in question, allowing us to map out operational processes, clarify roles, and pinpoint where support solutions were needed. This exercise also enabled the team to prioritize and categorize issues, allowing for the identification of solutions that could be implemented in short cycles, rapidly delivering improvements while managing risks associated with the uncertainty around disruptive decisions.
Breakthrough Moments and Results
One of the major outcomes of this pilot was the establishment of a common view of the entire value stream — a shared framework that allowed all participants to align on key issues and collaboratively design solutions. This visibility enabled:
- Improved coordination between departments,
- Faster problem-solving, and
- More targeted operational improvements,
By working in short, iterative cycles, the team was able to continuously refine and test solutions, ensuring that any progress made was aligned with the organization’s strategic goals. This approach helped break the cycle of urgency-driven short-term fixes and replaced it with a structured, scalable model for operational excellence.
Scaling for Broader Impact
The success of the pilot in the core activity stream provided a roadmap for scaling this nascent operational framework across the organization. By iterating on our solutions and addressing uncertainties in small, controlled steps, the organization was able to extend the operational framework to other value streams. This allowed them to sustain improvements over time, reduce inefficiencies, and improve alignment across the entire organization.
Outcomes and Lessons for the Strategy Team
The success of this pilot program gave the strategy team the tools and confidence to replicate it across other critical areas of the business. By aligning stakeholders and establishing a shared understanding of operations, the intervention streamlined collective efforts and boosted efficiency while fostering a more positive, collaborative work culture.
This resulted in a shift toward a continuous improvement mindset, with a renewed sense of trust in the organization’s ability to sustain future growth and innovation.
Conclusion: Operational Excellence as a Scalable Design
The impact of this project extends beyond a single transformation initiative. By addressing the root causes of operational dysfunction and designing a scalable solution, the organization had become better equipped to handle growing customer demand, improved employee satisfaction, and innovated for the future.
This case demonstrates how intentional design of operational systems - not just optimization of individual components—creates the foundation for sustainable growth. The key insight is that excellent operations emerge from how parts connect into a coherent whole, not just from how efficiently each part performs.
As organizations navigate increasingly complex environments, this design-led approach to operations provides a powerful alternative to traditional efficiency-driven improvement methods.