What we did

A large government agency engaged us to provide coaching and technical support to key internal staff (the staff) who were developing a Total Operating Model (TOM).

Since its inception, the internal agency team had seen significant expansion and growth, with managed funds growing by over 250% over a 7-year period. This expansion occurred alongside a shift towards cross-government procurement processes and standards. In order for the staff to maximise its operational capacity, in the delivery of quality people-centred services, it had to shift from a transactional to a strategic procurement approach.  This new approach (the Total Operating Model concept) involved strengthening the staff’s ways of working to achieve integrated, consistent, and high-quality processes to procure services, manage contracts and providers, and measure provider performance and client outcomes.

How we did it

The project involved supporting the TOM Project Leads to review a broad range of functions, policies, procedures, and processes and to undertake extensive stakeholder engagement with the staff and external stakeholders. Our work included technical review of research around procurement, contracting and commissioning – including an analysis of the current state of the staff.  We assisted the project team to define the objectives and principles of the TOM, road testing of different options and approaches, and to undertake workshops with the staff so that they were successfully brought along on the journey of developing the Operating Model.  We also assisted the project team by ghost writing the overall concept for the TOM and a Roadmap for Implementation for the Operations Leadership Team to consider at the end of 2019, including a series of transition initiatives.