02 · Strategic approach · First 12 months

A strategic approach to embedding and sustaining the operating model.

A strategic approach — not a task list. Across four connected frames it sets out how I’d spend the first 12 months, and answers the three questions this role must answer:

01

The approach for the first 12 months

Understand the current state, embed, connect, and set the course for how we win together.

02

The critical factors to sustain & embed it

What it takes for the operating model to last across the network — surfaced through the four frames.

03

The Improvement Team’s role

How the team enables organisation-wide improvement — an enabler, not the doer.

The organising idea

I approach every system of work through four connected frames.

Outcomes

The organisational outcomes in the aspiration — and how the model enables them.

Future · Process

Change

Alignment, roadmap and the leadership & culture shift that makes it last.

Future · People

Operations

The model activated — toolkit, huddles, rhythm, dashboards in place and working.

Near-term · Process

Engagement

A 360° lens — the team, leaders, staff, and the peer teams that enable it.

Near-term · People

One system, four lenses.

Each frame asks a different question of the operating model. Together they make sure I’m not just running the tools, but engaging the people, aligning to outcomes, and leading the change that embeds it.

It’s not a Lean tool. It’s a model I’ve used across many roles to align and prioritise against the organisation’s aspiration. It works with whatever operating model an organisation runs; it doesn’t replace it.

Every frame works Ironbark’s operating model — its six elements (a lean-focused example)

Visible leadershipShared goalsOperating rhythmProblem solvingStandard workService excellence

Beneath the four frames — three human questions

The four frames give breadth — they make sure I engage the whole system. But an operating model runs on people, and people are quietly asking three questions the whole time. These give the approach its depth — the human test beneath every frame.

Power & control

“Whose priorities matter?”

Is the work built on the right things — and owned in the line, not just at the centre?

Care

“Who has my back?”

Does the way of working feel safe and supported when people put themselves into it?

Respect & recognition

“Do I matter?”

Is effort seen, heard and acted on — so the model feels worth working, not imposed?

Where each of Ironbark’s six elements lives — or laminates

Visible leadership

Care — safety in the room, not surveillance.

Shared goals

Power & control — genuinely shared, or the centre’s, cascaded?

Operating rhythm

Power + Respect — serves the work, or performs for the centre?

Problem solving

Care + Respect — safe to flag; and the flag gets solved, not lost.

Standard work

Respect — built with the people who do it, not imposed on them.

Service excellence

Respect — shared and recognised, not pocketed.

Bringing it together

What makes it last — and the team that enables it.

The four frames don’t just describe the approach — they answer the two questions such a role turns on: the critical factors that sustain the model, and the role of the improvement team as an enabler, not the doer.

This case connects to

The signature model

The Strategic Partnering Approach

The full model — the gap, the frames, the questions, one lens and two hands.

The method, in depth

The Partnering Journey

The four frames built out as a full body of practice, frame by frame.

The human throughline

As We Are

Why the gap is a human distance first — the three questions, in full.

The foundations

Fundamentals