The same five failure modes recur across operating model transformations regardless of sector, regulator, or programme size. OMDDMS® names them precisely and gives organisations, practitioners, and oversight bodies a repeatable discipline for addressing all five.
Operating model transformation fails in ways that look different on the surface (an IT delay here, a governance dispute there, a training budget overrun somewhere else) but trace back to a small number of structural causes. The five failure modes below are those causes, not their symptoms.
The five failure modes are drawn from documented cross-sector transformation failures and operational resilience findings, not from a single organisation's experience. Each maps directly onto a gap in the Operating Model Design and Delivery Method (OMDDM) that OMDDMS® was built to close.
Each failure mode shows what the OMDDM requires, set against what typically happens without it, with the phase of the method where OMDDMS® addresses it directly.
The operating model is designed after the programme's solution is chosen, when it should be the foundation the solution is designed to fit, enabling the strategy rather than following the technology. Treating the model as something a programme produces at the end, rather than the foundation it builds on from the start, is the most common failure mode observed across sectors.
Governance specifies who sits on which board and who signs off, but rarely who holds the authority to decide and act when that authority is contested. A board that meets regularly is not the same as a board that can resolve a live disagreement about direction.
Structural gaps in judgement, authority, or working relationships between functions are not closed by a training course, however well it is delivered. Capability is a property of how roles, decision rights, and services are designed to interact, not of individual skill alone.
Telling people what is changing is not the same as designing how the organisation operates while the current and target models run side by side. The period of dual running is where most operational risk in a transformation concentrates, and it needs a design, not a briefing pack.
Without a named owner and an ongoing governance function, the model is modified informally and inconsistently until it no longer resembles what was designed. Go-live is a milestone in delivering the model, not the end of managing it.
The five failure modes are drawn from published operational resilience data and documented technology and change failures in regulated sectors.
Informed by UK operational resilience requirements, including FCA Policy Statement PS21/3 and PRA Supervisory Statement SS1/21 (2021).
Informed by documented banking technology and change failures, including the 2019 independent review of the 2018 TSB IT migration.
Tested against operating model programmes across government, retail, and infrastructure.
Seen across sectors: practitioners trained from organisations including
Across the UK, Europe, North America and Australia
The five failure modes are the reason OMDDMS® is structured the way it is, not five separate problems to be solved with five separate initiatives.
A single structure to design, deliver, and govern operating model change against, instead of eight disciplines each working to a different definition of success.
A diagnostic to apply to any programme, and a discipline that transfers between sectors even where the regulatory context does not.
A small number of concrete questions to ask a transformation partner before budget is committed, with a defensible basis for assurance reporting afterwards.
Questions about what the five failure modes are, where they come from, and how OMDDMS® addresses them.
The five failure modes are:
They recur across sectors regardless of industry, regulator, or programme size.
They are drawn from documented cross-sector transformation failures and operational resilience findings, not from a single organisation's experience. Sources considered include UK operational resilience requirements (FCA PS21/3 and PRA SS1/21) and the 2019 independent review of the 2018 TSB IT migration.
Treating the operating model as an afterthought rather than the foundation. The model is designed after the programme's solution has been chosen, when it should be the foundation the solution is designed to fit. OMDDMS® addresses this in the Scope phase, before a solution is designed.
No. They appear in different forms across financial services, government, healthcare, defence, retail, and other sectors. The regulatory context changes between sectors, but the structural causes do not.
Three questions are a reliable early test:
Vague answers to any of the three point to one or more of the five failure modes.
Follow each failure mode into the seven phases of the method, read the benefits by audience, or find an ATO to get certified.