Business Architecture
Every organisation has three cultures. The one in the mission statement. The one in the policy documents. And the one that shows up when the stakes are real. Most transformation programmes design for the first two. The third one is the one that decides whether your programme lives or dies.
Business Architecture
In 2016, a textbook-correct transformation at a Channel Islands wealth firm collapsed two weeks after go-live. The reason was not in any of the frameworks we had used. It was in the one component business architecture refuses to map.
Operating Model
The target operating model is one of the most widely used artefacts in business architecture. It is also an artefact that the world no longer respects. What if the problem is not the TOM itself, but the five-year cadence and mega-programme delivery we keep wrapping around it?
Business Architecture
There is a moment I have encountered in almost every transformation programme I have worked on. It happens in a workshop, or a design review, or sometimes in a corridor conversation that nobody planned. Someone asks a question that stops the room. Not a hostile question. Not a political one.
AI & Automation
Ask a senior executive whether their organisation has an AI operating model and the answer will almost certainly be: “We’re working on it.” They are wrong. The model already exists. It is just not the one anyone designed. Over the past two years, most organisations have accumulated a sprawling,
Business Architecture
Value networks have sat in our discipline for decades. We walked right past them. Business Architecture has a problem with its own toolkit. We have spent two decades convincing organisations that capability maps are the answer. When that didn’t stick, we rebranded to value streams. When that felt too
Operating Model
Here is a thought experiment. Take your organisation's most complex delivery challenge last year — a regulatory programme, a product launch, a major incident. Now look at the org chart. How many of the people who actually solved it report to the same box? Very few, I would wager.
Business Architecture
In my article published here in September 2025, I asked whether Business Architecture had become the new PMO — an expensive governance layer that slows delivery rather than shaping it. The response was striking. Hundreds of comments, most of them variations of the same frustration: executives don’t get it, they
Business Architecture
Business Architecture doesn’t fail because stakeholders “don’t get capabilities.” It fails when we try to sell the discipline, instead of landing the insight. After 20+ years working across financial services, public sector and utilities, I’ve repeatedly seen the same adoption trap: * In many organisations, the word “capability”
Operating Model
What peak season reveals about how your organisation really works—and how Business Architecture helps you fix it. It’s almost Christmas. The lights go up, the out-of-office messages multiply, and suddenly the organisation is asked to do something very simple on paper: Deliver on promises. Whether those
Business Architecture
Most organisations unknowingly pay twice for the same outcomes. A one-page Duplicate Spend Heatmap reveals overlap fast and lets leaders decide to keep, consolidate, or retire with under‑12‑month payback. Within 90 days you should see run‑rate savings, faster release lead‑times, and fewer audit issues. The
Business Architecture
Thanks to all for your comments on Rebooting Business Capabilities. There were some very interesting observations as well as questions raised on the capability SLOs. I have tried to provide an answer to most of the queries in this article. We’ve all seen the 1–5 “maturity” slides. They