You spent months redesigning your operating model. The strategy is clear. The documentation is thorough. But now, months into activation, the shift just isn’t landing. Teams are defaulting to old behaviors, momentum is stalling, and the expected business impact isn’t materializing.
The problem isn't your operating model design — it's your activation approach.
For many companies, translating strategy into day-to-day execution remains one of the most stubborn hurdles to changing an operating model. But getting this right is essential. When implementation is derailed, organizations see delays, inefficiency, and a lost competitive advantage.
# The Four Most Common Operating Model Activation Challenges
Propeller has helped multiple organizations, from global retailers to fast-scaling tech firms, navigate operating model activation. We’ve seen that the difference between success and stagnation often comes down to four specific and predictable challenges:
- Failure to connect vision to action
- Lack of cross-functional alignment
- Inadequate change management
- Inconsistent leadership advocacy
Address these four challenges, and your operating model gains traction. If you miss even one, you risk stalled progress, change fatigue, and a widening gap between strategy and execution. Here’s how to get your activation back on track.
Challenge 1
# Connecting Vision to Action
Your operating model describes how your organization achieves its goals, making an effective model essential for success. More importantly, it enables teams to operate with agility in response to changing business dynamics. Yet embedding an operating model is not just about defining the ideal state for how teams will work – it’s about defining the change that needs to happen to realize that vision. This is where many organizations, eager to realize value from a new model that was months in the making, risk running into problems.
At Propeller, we often see companies struggle to create a clear vision for how they want teams to work together in the future because their existing processes have been cobbled together over time, leaving individual roles misaligned with strategic priorities.
Our operating model experts consistently find that successful activation is 30% strategy and 70% orchestration. Companies must take a ‘show don’t tell’ approach with their teams providing direct support and guidance. We employ tactics like champion programs, process simulations, and direct coaching to bridge the gap. At best, operating model activation can be a lengthy process, demanding up to a year or two of consistent, incremental progress. Those organizations that rush activation risk failure and missed transformation goals.
Related Content: Redesigning Contact Center Operating Model to Drive New Technologies
Challenge 2
# Lack of Cross-Functional Alignment
Ensuring all departments and teams understand, adopt, and coordinate around a new operating model can be difficult, especially for large or siloed organizations. But organizations can’t advance without alignment.
A cross-functional operating model can improve efficiency by helping team members work together more effectively and achieve strategic objectives. It can bring organizations’ marketing, finance, technology, and other departments together to advance large, strategic initiatives more effectively.
At Propeller, we often see the impact of this misalignment through technology implementations. Departments may use the same tools to achieve vastly different goals. CIOs, tasked with supporting technology across the enterprise, often find themselves working to meet the individual needs of different business units. As a result, technology teams struggle to make sure the right resources are deployed in the right areas. Ultimately, new tools installed to enhance efficiency leave leaders, managers, and their teams feeling less capable of delivering solutions that meet everyone’s needs.
Organizations can instead deploy an operating model that aligns teams around strategic objectives. Through shared priorities and tools, teams can work more effectively to advance organizational goals.
Related Content: IT Organization Transformation to Support Retailer’s Growth
Challenge 3
# Top-Down Change Management Fails to Secure Buy-in
A top-down approach can be effective during the operating model design phase, helping ensure the new model aligns with the organization’s vision and high-level objectives. But when it comes to implementation, a bottom-up approach, supported by a clear change management strategy, is what secures employee buy-in and drives adoption. This approach ensures everyone understands how changes to their role will improve the organization.
Without that change strategy, employees are more likely to resist new ways of working due to uncertainty, fear of the unknown, or attachment to existing processes. It’s common for employees to revert to the legacy processes leadership is working to change. That anxiety can lead to decreased job satisfaction and resistance to change. Engaging employees early in operating model design allows teams to prepare for impending change and increases the likelihood of success.
In fact, we’ve even recommended that companies delay operating model activation in order to invite employee input. In the case of one technology company, this meant putting a hold on activation after months of working with a consulting firm to design their new operating model. The organization was ready to reveal its planning to teams when Propeller signed on to support activation. We helped the executive team recognize that pushing these changes from the top down would be detrimental to activation success. Why? Because we have repeatedly seen how companies that do not prioritize change management risk alienating the people whose roles are changing.
In this case, Propeller helped engage managers and lead workshops that allowed teams to contribute to operating model changes. This helped teams feel that they were part of the change and built excitement about moving forward.
Ultimately, this company succeeded in its operating model activation because it adopted an inclusive and adaptive process that enabled change readiness. The operating model was co-developed with insight from the CIO, managers, and team members. Their clear communication strategy, iterative piloting, and phased activation plan empowered lasting change.
Related Content: Five Steps To Connect Strategy and Operations
Challenge 4
# Inconsistent Leadership Advocacy
Is your leadership team aligned on your organization’s top priorities? Are those priorities being consistently reinforced across functions? Without unified leadership alignment and active advocacy, even the best-designed operating models will stall. Lack of alignment confuses teams, slows momentum, and undermines credibility before change even begins.
We’ve seen this failure firsthand. At one company, leadership excitement around operating model activation quickly waned as executives changed roles and change champions left the company. Propeller had worked closely with leaders to build engagement and excitement with teams on ground. Employees had bought into the value of the new operating models. However, executives soon backed off messaging that reinforced the importance of the work. Change initiatives faced competing prioritization with the very real need to get core work done. The absence of leadership alignment turned every activation checkpoint into a negotiation. Ultimately, progress slowed and change fatigue set in early.
When leadership teams are fully aligned on the value of operating model activation, they are more likely to embody the model they want their teams to adopt. Leaders who consistently demonstrate the types of behaviors they want to see in their teams powerfully shape organizational culture. As operating models are tightly connected to both culture and the strategic objectives established by organization design, it’s important for leaders to ensure the impact of change is understood in all of these areas.
Related Content: The Power of Innovative Leadership
# A Nimbler Alternative to Large-Scale Implementation
After months of designing a new operating model, organizations are understandably excited to move into implementation. However, rapidly implementing changes organization-wide can be messy and lead to confusion. Disruption can become overwhelming. Soon, progress stalls altogether. To avoid these outcomes, organizations need an approach to implementation that allows for testing, flexibility, and adaptation.
Part of the challenge here is that, in moving from design to implementation, leaders are largely operating on assumptions that their teams will work in a certain way. Inevitably, unforeseen hurdles will challenge these assumptions. Companies may need to address cultural misalignment to ensure employees are prepared for change. As new priorities emerge, the way work happens may need to be adapted. Prioritizing speed in activation prevents organizations from learning from these challenges. To move forward successfully, organizations need the flexibility to adjust and refine their operating model design.
An iterative approach to change can help organizations move forward more effectively. In fact, executives may find that this small-scale approach ultimately moves change forward faster. That’s because piloting a single strategic program or implementing change within a single team before scaling across the enterprise can lead to quick wins. With each successful pilot project, the shift to a new operating model gains credibility and increases momentum for broader adoption.
This approach can also reduce anxiety around change by making it feel more tangible. Each small project helps tie abstract operating model design to employees’ day-to-day work and connects strategic goals to action.
For some companies, an iterative approach may mean identifying ten operating model changes in the design phase but activating them one at a time. For other companies, it might mean implementing changes within one team or project to test the approach before it’s rolled out organization-wide. The right tactical approach will depend upon each organization’s needs and the scale of changes it’s implementing.
# Staging the Environment for Successful Activation
It takes considerable preparation, communication, and training for an organization to change the way it operates. For organizations struggling to activate their operating model, there is good news. While stumbling blocks will be unique to each organization, many stem from the shared root causes addressed above. With this understanding, it becomes easier to identify the specific blocks within your organization’s activation efforts and create an effective plan for moving forward.
This is an area where Propeller is uniquely equipped to help companies move forward. Our experts understand how to help organizations align around activation, secure buy-in across teams, and move forward into the next phase of operations. If you’re ready to lead the change that puts your company ahead, Propeller can help.
