Formula 1 teams don’t start with the engine. They start with the race: what are we built to win, and what does the whole car need to do it?
The same order works for any organisation: service design, then operating model, then workforce, then technology. Each one shapes the next. Most organisations do the opposite. They add technology first and hope people and processes catch up.
Here is a simpler way, and it starts with a pen and paper.
Step 1: Draw your service design
Get a pen and paper. Draw a grid with five rows.
1. Phases of the customer journey. The columns across the top. From first contact to ongoing relationship, what are the phases your client moves through? Together they show the flow of your business architecture.
2. Client Actions. Front stage services: the direct interactions with the client or customer.
3. Back Stage. The services that drive the back stage actions, which the client does not directly see.
4. Enablers. The people, skills, information, tools and rules that support rows 2 and 3. Describe them in plain words, not product names.
5. Blockages and loops. Where work stalls, repeats or goes round in circles.
Fill the empty boxes with bullet points. Keep it rough. Don’t polish it.
Count the cost of the blockages
Row 5 is where the insight is. For each blockage or loop, ask what it costs you in:
• value
• growth
• client satisfaction
• staff satisfaction
• results
Most teams already know where the drag is. They’ve just never added up the cost.
Step 2: Design the operating model
Now step back. Look at what your clients need (demand) and what you provide (supply) as if you were starting fresh.
If you could design the service from scratch, what would it look like? From that picture, design an operating model that fits your business architecture: how decisions are made, how work flows, and how money follows outcomes. That’s your ideal world.
Step 3: Shape the workforce
The operating model tells you what people need to do. Now ask:
• Which roles does the new model need, and which change?
• What capability and skills do we have, and what are we missing?
• How will people work differently day to day?
This is your pit crew. Everyone knows their job and their handover. Capability and ways of working matter as much as the technology.
Step 4: Measure the gap
How different is that ideal from your operating model today?
Then the honest question: how much of that gap can you actually manage? All of it, or part of it?
If it’s part, follow one rule: take on more than 50%, or don’t start yet. Below half, the organisation slides back to the old way. Wait until you can commit to at least half, then go.
Step 5: Prioritise the technology uplift
You’re unlikely to be starting from zero. Most organisations already have technology. So the question isn’t what to buy. It’s which technology uplift to make first.
Look at your blockages and your operating model. Which uplift removes the biggest blockage or enables the biggest gain? Start there. Automation and AI come in as support, not the driver.
Think of it as telemetry. It gives the team clear information, removes repeat work and speeds up decisions. It doesn’t decide where the car is going.
A great tool in untrained hands, inside an unchanged process, is an expensive pit stop that goes nowhere.
Step 6: Share the vision and agree the measures
Before you start, two things:
• A shared vision among a few key people. Not everyone yet. Just enough to carry it.
• Success measures. How will you know it’s working? Decide now, in terms you can check later.
• How you make decisions. Test it as a team: learn, apply, reflect, refine.
Then start
Start. Small, clear and committed beats big and vague.
Try this on Monday
Pick one service. Draw the five rows. Spend twenty minutes on row 5. Put a number on what the blockages cost you.
That page will tell you where to begin.
What’s next
Next in the series: T3 — Implement It, where plans become outputs in motion and people are equipped for new ways of working.
Ferne Eliz King helps organisations build tangible plans that track to real results. Get in touch to talk about your next transformation.
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