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Think about the last crisis your organisation went through. A major incident. An urgent deadline. A moment when everything was at stake.What happened?Hierarchy flattened. Decisions were made in minutes, not weeks. People worked across functions without waiting for a governance forum. Information went straight to the people who needed it. Nobody waited for certainty. Everyone moved.Then the crisis passed, and it all came back. The slow decisions. The escalations. The waiting for sign-off. Same people the whole time.What you saw in the crisis was your organisation with its norms suspended. What you live with the rest of the year is the same organisation with its norms back in charge.Every organisation runs on rules about how execution happens. Some are written down. The approval thresholds. The governance gates. Who signs off on what.&nbsp;Most are not.&nbsp;How fast decisions really get made. How bad news travels. Whether the hard thing gets said in the room, or in the corridor afterwards.The written ones are easy to find and easy to change. The unwritten ones decide whether anything moves. Because execution is not the plan on the page.It is the everyday decisions people make about what is safe to do here. Change the strategy all you like. Nothing shifts until the unwritten rules do.If you have been following this series, you will have seen this pattern across every lever. Governance that escalates by default. Ownership that lives on paper. Performance still rewarding what the last strategy needed. Different problems on the surface. The same unwritten rules underneath.When I was researching strategy execution in large organisations, 96% of the senior leaders I spoke to told me their reliance on rules, process and standardisation had a moderate to extremely high impact on how they execute.Those rules were meant to reduce uncertainty. But the rule was never the problem. The habit that grew around it was.One leader described it like this: "It constipates decision-making. Everything has to go up the chain. Everything is an escalation, no one can make a decision. That means forward momentum is concentrated in the hand of that authority."Some of that is written down. But escalating the decisions already yours to make is written nowhere. People do it because no one wants to be the one who acted alone.That is what makes norms so hard to shift.&nbsp;The written rule you can see, so it gets fixed. The norm you cannot, so it survives the fix. Until someone names it.The written rules are a design decision. So are the unwritten ones, just made by accident and never revisited. Naming how work actually moves, who really decides, and what people believe they're allowed to do is part of what <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/services/operating-model" href="https://rebeccareti.com/services/operating-model">Operating Model</a> sets out to change.This is part of lever 7 (Culture for Execution) of the Strategy Execution by Design Model. <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/execution-model" href="https://rebeccareti.com/execution-model">See the full framework →</a>Not sure which of the seven levers is holding your execution back? <a data-mce-href="https://sebdsnapshot.rebeccareti.com/" href="https://sebdsnapshot.rebeccareti.com/">Take the Strategy Execution Maturity Model Assessment →</a>Written by <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/about" href="https://rebeccareti.com/about">Rebecca Reti</a>, strategy and execution consultant working with boards and executive teams across Australia and New Zealand.There's a one-pager on LinkedIn, naming seven execution norms shaping every outcome in your organisation, whether you designed them or not. <a data-mce-href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebecca-reti-4582433b_strategyexecution-executionbydesign-cultureforexecution-activity-7472406981874470912-KPfG" href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebecca-reti-4582433b_strategyexecution-executionbydesign-cultureforexecution-activity-7472406981874470912-KPfG" data-mce-selected="inline-boundary">See it on LinkedIn →﻿</a>

The unwritten rules that decide how work gets done

Diverse group of professionals standing together in modern open office during culture-building workshop

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. It is one of the most quoted lines in business, and it has quietly done a lot of harm.It tells leaders that culture always wins. So culture becomes a fixed, almost sacred thing. Who we are. What we value. The words you see on the wall in reception.Here is a different idea. Culture is not who you are. It is what your strategy needs you to be, say and do.And the cost of getting it wrong is not abstract.I have watched good strategies, properly funded and well structured, stall completely. Not because the plan was wrong, but because the organisation and’s its people were never shaped to deliver it. The work slowed in the corridors. Decisions crept back up the chain. The hard things went unsaid and nobody could quite point to why.The pushback is always the same: you cannot design culture, it emerges. That is half right. Culture does emerge, but emerging is not the same as accidental. You do not control a culture, you design the conditions it forms around.The part most change efforts miss, is that a culture you are trying to shift is not dysfunction. It is adaptation. It formed because at some point it kept people safe, or rewarded, or out of trouble, and they hold onto it because it worked for them.That is why it fights back. You are asking people to give up something that has protected or promoted them, and they will not do that until the new way feels safer and more rewarding than the old one.This is why culture belongs at the centre of execution, not at the edge of it. The plan is rarely what fails. The conditions to deliver it are.None of the building blocks are mine. Edgar Schein showed that the real culture sits below the surface, in the assumptions nobody says out loud. The Emotional Culture Deck makes the case that what people feel drives what they do. And Gustavo Razzetti's Culture Design Canvas maps the gap between the culture you have and the one you need. What I have done in my work, is aim it squarely at execution, and treat culture as one lever in delivering a strategy, not a discipline that stands on its own.And it is eighteen to twenty-four months of work, not a quarter. Anyone who tells you culture changes faster than that is selling something.Most organisations can describe the culture they want. Few have designed the culture their strategy needs.Culture doesn't shift because it's declared. It shifts when the conditions around it change, and those conditions are mostly set by what leaders do when it's inconvenient. That's the work in <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/services/leadership" href="https://rebeccareti.com/services/leadership">Leadership</a>.This is part of lever 7 (Culture for Execution) of the Strategy Execution by Design Model. <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/execution-model" href="https://rebeccareti.com/execution-model">See the full framework →</a>Not sure which of the seven levers is holding your execution back? <a data-mce-href="https://sebdsnapshot.rebeccareti.com/" href="https://sebdsnapshot.rebeccareti.com/">Take the Strategy Execution Maturity Model Assessment →</a>Written by <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/about" href="https://rebeccareti.com/about" data-mce-selected="inline-boundary">Rebecca Reti,</a> strategy and execution consultant working with boards and executive teams across Australia and New Zealand.The method is in the one-pager. It starts with the strategy and what it needs people to feel, works through the behaviours and the assumptions underneath, names the gap, then embeds it. It's a loop, not a project.<a data-mce-href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebecca-reti-4582433b_strategyexecution-executionbydesign-cultureforexecution-activity-7470218175851175937-nIZw" href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebecca-reti-4582433b_strategyexecution-executionbydesign-cultureforexecution-activity-7470218175851175937-nIZw"> See it on LinkedIn →</a>

Can you design culture, or does it only emerge?

Multiple consultants collaborating with client team across modern high-rise office during strategic implementation workshop

The strategy was clear: work across functions, break down silos, and deliver outcomes that no single team could achieve alone.But the culture had other ideas.I was part of a leadership team that had just launched a new strategy in a deeply siloed organisation. We knew the way of working needed to change. So we went straight to the systems and processes we thought would drive it. Performance measures, team structures, and decision rights.It took years. And some of it worked.But we missed something.We never intentionally discussed or designed the culture that would enable our strategy. Rather, we focused on the mechanics and assumed the culture would follow.It didn't.What I have learned since, through years of working in this space and through my own research, is that even when organisations do design their culture, most focus on the cognitive side: values, behaviours, and systems.&nbsp;What rarely gets addressed is the emotional culture: what you want people to feel and not feel for the strategy to land.Get the emotional culture right, and it drives the behaviours, the systems, and the ways of working that follow.In our case, we never asked that question. People were carrying the fear of losing relevance and the anxiety of being measured differently. What we never harnessed was the excitement of being part of something bigger. The pride in building something new. The energy that comes from working in ways that actually matter.Most culture work starts with values and stops at behaviours, because the emotional layer is the uncomfortable one to name out loud. Working through what your strategy needs people to feel, and what's currently in the way, is the work in <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/services/leadership" href="https://rebeccareti.com/services/leadership">Leadership</a>.It is not just my experience. 64% of the leaders in my research rated culture alignment as a top priority for execution, yet most had never assessed whether their emotional culture matched the strategy they were trying to deliver.Emotions drive behaviours. Behaviours drive culture. Culture drives performance.A team that feels trust collaborates. A team that feels fear protects. You do not need to mandate the behaviour if you design the emotional conditions that produce it.This is part of lever 7 (Culture for Execution) of the Strategy Execution by Design Model. <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/execution-model" href="https://rebeccareti.com/execution-model">See the full framework →</a>Not sure which of the seven levers is holding your execution back? <a data-mce-href="https://sebdsnapshot.rebeccareti.com/" href="https://sebdsnapshot.rebeccareti.com/" data-mce-selected="inline-boundary">Take the Strategy Execution Maturity Model Assessment →</a>Written by <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/about" href="https://rebeccareti.com/about">Rebecca Reti</a>, strategy and execution consultant working with boards and executive teams across Australia and New Zealand.The one-pager maps six common culture types and the emotions that drive them. <a data-mce-href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebecca-reti-4582433b_strategyexecution-executionbydesign-cultureforexecution-activity-7467319128962408448-AyH2" href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebecca-reti-4582433b_strategyexecution-executionbydesign-cultureforexecution-activity-7467319128962408448-AyH2">See it on LinkedIn →</a>

What happens when culture and strategy pull apart

Diverse tire retail team standing confidently in store environment, ready to assist customers and fleet buyers

There is a moment in every high-performing team where something shifts.People stop delivering their part and start delivering together.&nbsp;They challenge each other not because someone told them to, but because they care about the outcome. They close gaps nobody assigned them.That is collective commitment. And in execution, it is everything.&nbsp;Because no strategy is delivered by one person or one function.&nbsp;It crosses boundaries, it requires trade-offs, and the governance system will never be fast enough to catch what falls between them.&nbsp;At some point, the strategy depends on people choosing to go beyond what was asked of them.When that starts to fade, most organisations reach for an engagement programme.&nbsp;But engagement and collective commitment are not the same thing.&nbsp;When I was researching strategy execution, this was one of the clearest findings. Engagement matters - when people feel pride and belonging, they perform better.&nbsp;But it is an enabler, not a driver.&nbsp;It creates the conditions where people can execute. It does not create the collective will to deliver a strategy together.That choice is not a personality trait, and it is not an engagement score. It is built in how the executive team behaves under pressure, which is the work in <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/services/leadership" href="https://rebeccareti.com/services/leadership">Leadership</a>. This is part of lever 6 (Performance &amp; Commitment) of the Strategy Execution by Design Model. <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/execution-model" href="https://rebeccareti.com/execution-model">See the full framework →</a>Not sure which of the seven conditions is holding your execution back? <a data-mce-href="https://sebdsnapshot.rebeccareti.com/" href="https://sebdsnapshot.rebeccareti.com/">Take the Strategy Execution Maturity Model Assessment →</a>Written by <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/about" href="https://rebeccareti.com/about">Rebecca Reti</a>, strategy and execution consultant working with boards and executive teams across Australia and New Zealand.This one prompted a lot of conversation on LinkedIn. <a data-mce-href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebecca-reti-4582433b_strategyexecution-executionbydesign-executiondiscipline-activity-7454997880077189120-j0PH" href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebecca-reti-4582433b_strategyexecution-executionbydesign-executiondiscipline-activity-7454997880077189120-j0PH">Join the discussion on LinkedIn →</a>

Why an engagement programme won't fix your execution

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Your strategy says collaborate. Your performance system rewards the individual. People will always optimise for what gets measured, and they are being rational when they do.In 2022, researching strategy execution, I asked a senior leader what was stopping her teams collaborating across functions.Her answer stopped me: "You cannot give away all your resources if you are being rewarded with individual objectives. People are competing."The strategy needed collective action, yet the performance system rewarded self-preservation.&nbsp;People were not being difficult. They were being rational.She was not describing a culture problem, she was describing a design problem.This is the execution contradiction.&nbsp;This wasn't one organisation. Institutional collectivism, the extent to which a firm actually rewards collective action, was the highest-rated dimension in my research: 91.5% of senior leaders said it had a high to extremely high impact on strategy execution. Yet over half reported the same contradiction she described. Their strategy required collectivism. Their processes and rewards incentivised the individual.Your strategy says one thing.&nbsp;Your performance system rewards another.&nbsp;And people will always optimise for what gets measured. Performance and measures is one of the six dimensions I assess in Operating Model work, because a reward system pointed at the individual will quietly outvote any strategy that needs the collective.This is part of lever 6 (Performance &amp; Commitment) of the Strategy Execution by Design Model. <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/execution-model" href="https://rebeccareti.com/execution-model">See the full framework →</a>Not sure which of the seven conditions is holding your execution back? <a data-mce-href="https://sebdsnapshot.rebeccareti.com/" href="https://sebdsnapshot.rebeccareti.com/">Take the Strategy Execution Maturity Model Assessment →</a>Written by <a data-mce-href="https://rebeccareti.com/about" href="https://rebeccareti.com/about">Rebecca Reti</a>, strategy and execution consultant working with boards and executive teams across Australia and New Zealand.This one prompted a lot of conversation on LinkedIn. <a data-mce-href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebecca-reti-4582433b_lever-6-performance-architecture-activity-7452461182965219329-Mr43" href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebecca-reti-4582433b_lever-6-performance-architecture-activity-7452461182965219329-Mr43">Join the discussion on LinkedIn →</a>

Why your performance system is undoing your strategy

<h3>When Smart Strategy Stalls at the Execution Line</h3>Strong strategy on paper is not the problem for most Australian organisations. Many boards, CEOs and senior leaders head into the last quarter of the financial year with a clear plan and a confident story for the market. Then progress slows right when performance matters most.What often goes wrong is not intent or effort, but the way the organisation is set up to deliver. Operating model design is usually working quietly in the background, shaping who decides what, how work flows, and how people are held to account. When that design does not fit the strategy, execution stalls, even with talented people and healthy budgets.We see this gap every day. Ambition at the top, frustration in the middle, and fatigue on the front line. The central idea is simple: if your operating model is misaligned, no amount of energy, talent, or extra funding will make strategy land in the way you expect.<h3>The Hidden Signals Your Operating Model Is Failing You</h3>Operating model problems rarely announce themselves with a neat label. They show up as day-to-day friction that leaders start to treat as "just how things are around here."Look for overlapping accountabilities where two or more areas believe they own the same outcome. Watch for slow or circular decision-making, with issues bouncing between committees or levels. Notice when "exceptions" to agreed processes become the norm just to get work over the line, or when rework keeps surfacing because teams did not share the same brief or the same view of priority. And pay attention when leaders spend more time firefighting than leading people and shaping future plans.As Q4 pressure builds, these signals get louder. Targets are at risk, so new initiatives are rushed through without clear ownership. Teams scramble to hit KPIs. Workloads spike and the same few high performers are leaned on again and again because the model is not doing the heavy lifting.The impact on people performance follows quickly. Disengagement and quiet frustration settle into key teams. Confusion grows about what really matters this quarter versus what is "nice to have." Leaders slip back into old, comfortable habits when the new model is unclear. These are not usually signs of poor strategy. They are usually evidence that the operating model was never fully designed for execution, or has not kept pace with strategic shifts.<h3>Where Operating Model Design Commonly Goes Wrong</h3>Recognising that the operating model is part of the problem is one thing. Fixing it well is another, because most redesign efforts fall into predictable traps.When leaders talk about changing the operating model, the conversation often jumps straight to structure. New org charts are drawn. Boxes move. Reporting lines shift. Then everyone hopes that performance will lift. But structure-only redesigns that ignore ways of working, governance and decision rights rarely deliver lasting change. Neither do "copy-paste" models lifted from other markets that do not match local customers, regulators or workforce expectations. And too often, little attention is given to the capabilities people actually need to work differently.Underneath these design pitfalls sits a deeper timing problem. Strategy typically changes faster than the operating model. The organisation declares new growth areas, a sharper customer focus or a different service mix, yet old processes, incentives and reporting lines stay in place. People are told to aim for new outcomes while being measured and rewarded for old ones.Boards and CEOs can also unintentionally add to the misalignment by approving too many priorities at once, avoiding clear trade-offs between "must-win" and "nice if possible" goals, or splitting ownership of cross-functional work in ways that blur accountability.This is where an experienced operating model design consultant in Australia can help leaders spot patterns, test choices and design something that fits the organisation's real context rather than a generic template.<h3>Designing an Operating Model That Actually Executes Strategy</h3>If the common pitfalls share a theme, it is that redesign too often focuses on the visible parts of the model while leaving the connective tissue untouched. An effective operating model is not just an org chart. It is the full set of choices about how your organisation will turn strategy into work, decisions and outcomes every day.Strong models usually share a few features: clear choices on where and how the organisation will compete, role clarity so everyone knows "what I own" and "what I support," decision rights that spell out who decides, who is consulted and who is informed, governance rhythms that match the pace of the work, and performance measures that link directly to strategic outcomes rather than just activity levels.At Rebecca Reti Consulting, we work with boards and senior leaders to connect strategy, operating model and people performance as one system. The focus is not a one-off restructure. It is about designing how value is actually created and then lining up structure, processes and talent behind that design.Execution discipline sits at the centre of this work. That means being ruthless about a few critical value-creating activities, aligning teams around shared goals and clear handovers, and setting operating mechanisms that keep attention on progress and surface issues early.For Australian organisations, regulatory settings, dispersed geographies, and hybrid work patterns add extra layers of complexity. These make it even more important to make conscious design choices rather than letting the operating model evolve by accident.<h3>Turning Year-End Pressure Into a Strategic Reset</h3>Getting the model right matters at any point in the cycle, but there is a particularly powerful window approaching. As Q3 results land and attention turns to end-of-year performance, many leadership teams are also shaping the next strategy cycle. Forecasts are getting sharper, investment choices are on the table, and the question is unavoidable: can our current operating model actually deliver what we are about to commit to?A practical reset agenda for boards and executives might include:<ul><li>Reviewing strategic priorities against how work is currently organised</li><li>Walking through real decision pathways for one or two major initiatives</li><li>Identifying the top three blockers that slow or dilute execution</li><li>Testing whether meeting rhythms and performance reviews focus on the right things An external operating model design consultant in Australia can bring fresh perspective, cross-sector insight and tested frameworks to this review. That outside view often makes it easier to name long-standing issues, challenge accepted work-arounds and design targeted interventions rather than another broad restructure.</li></ul>Using this seasonal window to refine the operating model increases the chance that the new financial year starts with clarity, alignment and executable plans, not just a refreshed slide deck.<h3>Move From Paper Strategy to Real-World Results</h3>Operating model design works best when it is treated as a strategic capability, not a one-off event or a cost exercise. Boards, CEOs and senior leaders who return to it regularly are usually the ones who sustain execution over time.A simple question can help you test this right now: for the one critical initiative that worries you most, is the problem really about strategy, or is it about the way your organisation is set up to deliver?If the answer points to the operating model, that is not a setback. It is the clearest starting point for meaningful progress. Rebecca Reti Consulting partners with leadership teams as an independent strategy and execution partner, from diagnostic review through to operating model design and people performance alignment. The goal is always the same: to turn clear strategic intent into measurable outcomes at the pace and scale that ambition demands.If you are ready to turn high-level intentions into a practical structure that works day to day, contact us to start the conversation. As an experienced operating model design consultant in Australia, we will work with you to align governance, roles and ways of working so your organisation can deliver consistently.

Fix Strategy Delivery With Better Operating Models

Rebecca Reti Consulting