Designing Operating Models That Work for People and Business
Executive Summary
Processes create structure. People create performance. Effective operating models enable both.
When I took ownership of digital portfolio and delivery operations at Staples Canada, I inherited an environment where outdated processes, fragmented accountability, and low psychological safety were limiting organizational effectiveness.
The challenges extended across financial management, technology delivery, and data operations. Incorrect charges and payment delays undermined financial discipline and vendor relationships. Legacy release processes created friction between delivery teams. Specialized data teams lacked consistent end-to-end visibility and accountability.
I recognized that these were not simply process problems. Sustainable improvement required understanding the people involved, how work actually happened, and what prevented teams from performing effectively.
I led three operating-model transformations:
Financial Governance: Set the direction for stronger spending accountability and led the partnership with Finance, with team-led execution contributing to FY26 budget alignment across both OpEx and CapEx for the first time in five years.
Release Governance: Established the conditions for team-led process redesign and collaboration, improving delivery performance, psychological safety, and continuous improvement.
Data Delivery Governance: Set the direction and led adoption of a shared delivery framework, with teams executing the design and implementation to connect five specialized teams through clearer prioritization, ownership, and cross-functional coordination.
The work supported an operating environment spanning approximately $13M in capital investment and $19M in operating expenditure, with 12 scrum pods and four vendor-managed projects.
Across these transformations, I applied one consistent leadership principle: set a clear direction, enable teams to remove structural friction, and build accountability into the system so they can perform and continuously improve.
Strategic Initiative & Ownership
As the director accountable for digital portfolio and delivery operations, I set the direction for improving how teams collaborated, executed work, and managed resources across a complex operating portfolio.
Rather than treating governance, financial controls, and organizational effectiveness as separate administrative responsibilities, I approached them as interconnected drivers of business performance.
My accountability spanned three operating challenges—financial accountability, release delivery, and data operations. I set priorities and expectations, aligned cross-functional partners, and enabled my team to execute the improvements.
My role was to establish direction, clarify accountability, and enable team ownership while remaining accountable for portfolio performance and business outcomes.
01. Financial Governance: Restoring Financial Discipline Through Partnership
Diagnose: Identify the Root Cause Beyond Financial Errors
Financial management was fragmented. Incorrect charges were recurring, vendor payments were delayed, and business partners lacked clear accountability for spending.
These issues strained vendor relationships and made financial oversight unnecessarily reactive.
I recognized that the challenge was not simply inaccurate transactions. It was a lack of consistent ownership, clear responsibilities, and effective collaboration between business teams and Finance.
Simplify: Establish Clear Spending Accountability
I set the direction for stronger financial governance, with clear expectations for spending visibility, charge reconciliation, vendor accuracy, and ownership. My team translated those expectations into the detailed processes and controls.
The priority was to replace recurring escalations with a transparent operating process. My team led the detailed reconciliation and payment coordination, with clear accountability for resolving discrepancies.
Activate: Strengthen the Finance Partnership
I led the cross-functional partnership with Finance and established shared expectations for financial oversight. My team worked with Finance on spending reviews, vendor-record corrections, and charge investigations.
A central part of my leadership accountability was strengthening the relationship between business partners and Finance so the teams could resolve issues and manage resources together.
The goal was to move from reactive issue resolution to a collaborative model in which teams shared responsibility for financial accuracy, timely payments, and portfolio performance.
Sustain: Achieve Financial Discipline at Portfolio Scale
In FY26, under my leadership, the portfolio achieved budget alignment across both operating and capital expenditure for the first time in five years.
This milestone reflected stronger financial accountability, more disciplined oversight, and a deeper cross-functional partnership with Finance.
It demonstrated that financial governance is not simply about enforcing controls. It is about creating the clarity, ownership, and relationships needed to manage resources responsibly.
02. Release Governance: From Finger-Pointing to Continuous Improvement
Diagnose: Understand Why the Process Wasn't Working
When I took on the team, psychological safety was low and the release-gating process had not evolved alongside CI/CD delivery practices.
Teams struggled with outdated requirements and cross-functional friction. When issues emerged, conversations frequently shifted toward assigning blame rather than solving problems.
The people closest to the work understood where the process was failing, but lacked an effective environment for improving it together.
I recognized that the problem was not simply an outdated process. It was an operating environment that discouraged collaboration and shared ownership.
Simplify: Redesign Around How Teams Actually Deliver
I set the expectation that release governance should reflect how teams actually delivered. I empowered the people closest to the work to assess delivery challenges and lead the detailed process redesign.
The teams examined how release governance could better reflect CI/CD practices while retaining the controls required for reliable execution.
The objective was to create a practical process that teams understood, trusted, and could continuously improve.
Activate: Create Space for Collaborative Problem-Solving
I established Release Matters as a weekly forum for shared ownership and continuous improvement. Teams used it to surface release challenges, provide feedback, and develop solutions together.
My role was to set expectations for open discussion and shared accountability, support teams in challenging existing practices, and enable them to own process improvements.
The forum shifted the conversation from identifying who was responsible for a problem to understanding what needed to change in the system.
Sustain: Build Continuous Improvement Into Team Ownership
Release Matters became an ongoing mechanism for identifying friction, improving delivery practices, and strengthening collaboration.
The changes contributed to three improvements:
Collaboration: Teams became more open and proactive in resolving cross-functional issues.
Delivery performance: Processes better reflected CI/CD requirements and supported more effective execution.
Process ownership: Teams became more engaged in maintaining and improving their ways of working.
The most significant transformation was not the redesigned process itself.
It was creating a team environment where people could identify problems, solve them together, and continuously improve the system they operated.
03. Data Delivery Governance: Connecting Five Teams Through Shared Accountability
Diagnose: Map the End-to-End System
The Data organization consisted of five specialized teams responsible for different stages of an interconnected delivery process.
Each team understood its own responsibilities, but the overall workflow lacked consistent visibility into intake, prioritization, handoffs, and cross-functional dependencies.
Requests entered through multiple channels, responsibilities sometimes overlapped, and unclear ownership made delivery coordination difficult.
I directed the discovery effort around the needs of the five teams and their dependencies. My team engaged the specialized teams to understand their responsibilities, challenges, and coordination needs.
My team mapped the end-to-end data flow and identified overlaps, unclear accountability, and disconnected workflows. I used those findings to set priorities for a more connected delivery model.
The central problem was that teams managed their individual work, but the organization needed a more connected way to manage delivery as one system.
Simplify: Design One Connected Delivery Framework
Based on the discovery findings, I set the direction for a shared Data Delivery Framework and guided the team around three foundations:
Intake and Prioritization Governance
Create a consistent approach to capturing demand, evaluating priorities, and making decisions based on business value, urgency, and available capacity.
Ownership and Cross-Team Visibility
Clarify responsibilities, make handoffs and dependencies visible, and establish mechanisms for managing blockers across teams.
Process Standardization and Automation
Introduce consistent workflows and integrated tools to reduce manual coordination, improve communication, and support more predictable delivery.
The objective was not to eliminate the teams' specialized responsibilities. It was to connect their work through clear governance and shared visibility.
Activate: Implement Shared Governance Across Five Teams
I led adoption of the Data Delivery Framework across the five specialized teams, aligning the direction and accountability for a more consistent approach from intake through delivery. My team led the detailed design, implementation, and rollout.
Through that team-led implementation, the framework introduced shared governance mechanisms, clearer work ownership, improved visibility into cross-team dependencies, and integrated Jira-based workflows.
This enabled teams to coordinate interconnected work through a common structure rather than relying solely on disconnected team-level processes.
Sustain: Enable End-to-End Accountability and Improvement
The implemented framework provided a foundation for more transparent prioritization, coordinated delivery, and ongoing process improvement.
It also informed a broader Unified Data Governance proposal, which outlined longer-term opportunities for unified demand management, organizational accountability, and product-management practices across data capabilities.
The broader organizational proposal was a next-stage direction, distinct from the delivery framework already implemented.
The transformation demonstrated how understanding individual teams and their interdependencies can lead to a more effective operating system for the entire organization.
Leadership Takeaway
The most effective operating models are not designed around processes. They are designed around the people who need to make those processes work.
Across financial governance, release delivery, and data operations, I encountered different challenges but applied the same approach:
Diagnose: Set the questions and ensure the people closest to the work inform the diagnosis of operational friction.
Simplify: Define the desired outcomes, governance principles, and decision rights, and empower teams to develop practical ways of working.
Activate: Align stakeholders, enable team-led implementation, and hold clear owners accountable for execution.
Sustain: Maintain oversight of outcomes and strengthen the governance and team ownership that support continuous improvement.
The outcomes ranged from stronger collaboration and delivery performance to more integrated cross-functional execution and a significant financial milestone: achieving OpEx and CapEx budget alignment for the first time in five years.
My leadership philosophy is to build systems that enable people to succeed and that continue to improve without depending on me.
