The operating model — in depth
The approach page covers the squad, the C3 architecture and the proving method. This page is the deeper operating model: how the rest of the bank moves with the squads — without which a fast squad is just a fast engine bolted to a slow chassis.
How the bank is engaged
The beachhead proposition pulls one thread through every function — one named risk owner, one finance line, one operations exception model — rather than transforming all of risk, finance and HR up front.
Each function transforms the slice the first value stream needs, then the next, and the new ways of working propagate horizontally through chapters and communities of practice. Risk co-owns the paved-road control library; Finance funds the value stream, not projects; Operations shifts to exception handling and oversight of agent-prepared work; Compliance feeds obligations into the control library so they become composable, not bespoke; HR uses the SFIA role profiles as the job architecture.
What actually makes functions move is sponsorship with teeth. Tie transformation outcomes to a named accountable executive under SM&CR, and the functions move because someone is personally accountable — not because a deck asked nicely.
Landing in a not-yet-ready environment
The squads are usually ready before the environment is. So they land as a forward-deployed unit with their own paved-road controls and harness, while a parallel readiness workstream upgrades the host.
Expect gaps: a secure SDLC, architecture review and CISO sign-off that still assume the old delivery shape; ITIL v4 not yet able to absorb continuous, agent-assisted delivery; procurement designed for staff-augmentation or fixed-scope SOWs; and incumbent suppliers with commercial reasons to slow a model that shifts value to reusable capability. The unit ships its own controls so it isn't blocked waiting, and the readiness workstream — cleared by SM&CR sponsorship — turns the unit's paved road into the bank's once approved.
The transformation backbone
Sequencing whole-bank change while keeping the lights on needs a small backbone that owns the roadmap, the dependencies and the operating-model change itself — not a revived programme office that manages features and reads status.
An executive, SM&CR-tied, who can change finance's funding rules, HR's grades and risk's operating model — and whose incentives change with them.
Owns the reference architecture and the fitness functions that keep the estate composable rather than forked — the centre of gravity for sovereignty. The role we most often advise into.
Owns sequencing, dependencies and the migration path — so change lands in the right order without re-centralising delivery.
Coaching
Coach-bloat is where transformations lose credibility with a CRO. Coaches build the muscle and leave; they never become permanent overhead.
What coaches are not here: ceremony-teachers running stand-ups by rote. What they're for: helping senior people unlearn stage-gate reflexes and adopt accountable autonomy and evidence-over-status; coaching leadership on how to fund and govern value streams; and — distinctively — coaching senior squads on the agentic golden path, the evals and the harness. Because AI is absorbing role boundaries, you need fewer classic process coaches and more agentic delivery coaches — a genuinely different profile.
Leadership
Leaders move from approving projects and reading status decks to funding value streams and reading evidence. That shift is as large as the squad shift — and the one most likely to silently revert.
Name the leaders, tie them to SM&CR, and change what they're funded and measured on — otherwise the squads run fast inside an unchanged governance cage.
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