A while back, I attended a talk on Being vs Becoming: who we are vs who we want to be. The parallel to Operations is striking. So often we design for who the business is, but what if we designed for who the business wants to become?
Being
Every organization has an identity and established ways of working, their own cadence and rhythm if you will. This is the identity that employees know. It helps them understand what to anticipate and provides security in their day to day. As most Operations leaders have experienced, there is often resistance and discomfort when we start digging, asking questions on how work is done, how things could be better.
It’s Operations’ job to help teams optimize their rhythms and cadences, yet our presence can (consciously or unconsciously) threaten the safety employees have in their day-to-day. There are many ways to ease and work through these tensions, one of the most common being solving the immediate problem that keeps teams functioning similar to their current processes. This maintains psychological safety, keeps teams happy, and helps work get done a bit more effectively. But does it change the business? No.
Becoming
It’s no secret that AI, automation and digitalization are causing an upheaval in all industries and how people approach their work. Organizations have the opportunity to not just envision, but actively work towards a new way of being. Yet, the common response is to layer new tech onto old systems and processes in the hope of gaining efficiencies.
This is important because, without a clear vision of the future state, employees experience transformation as a threat, not an opportunity. The key here is recognizing that this isn’t just about swapping out a manual task for AI or automation. It’s about redesigning how cultures, people, and systems interact so the organization can evolve as fast as the environment around it.
Culture
Curiosity, iteration, and learning from failure may come naturally to Operations, but for long-term transformation to happen, these behaviours need to become part of how an entire organization works. An adaptive culture treats experimentation as a normal rhythm of work rather than a disruption, making it easier for teams to explore new approaches and respond to changing conditions.
When performance is tied to experimentation, iteration, and learning, not perfection, people feel safe testing ideas, questioning assumptions, and evolving their own ways of working. By choosing to value this kind of cultural capability, organizations enable a workforce that is more flexible, resilient, and prepared for the changes ahead.
People
A basic truth all Operations leaders know: no matter how well a system is built, it will fail if the people using it aren’t equipped to evolve with it. This is why designing for adaptive capability is foundational to long-term transformation. Continuous learning and shared decision-making only matter when they’re anchored in the capabilities the organization will need in the future, not the tasks it performs today.
Keep in mind, the goal isn’t to teach people how to execute current workflows more efficiently. It’s to help them build the judgment, technical fluency, and adaptability required as their roles shift. When employees understand where the organization is headed and feel confident experimenting with new approaches, they stop seeing transformation as something that happens to them and instead start seeing themselves as contributors in shaping what comes next.
Systems
When I first started designing systems, they were big, they were detailed… and they were fragile. If you removed one part, the whole thing failed. This rigidity was built in because I assumed things would always remain the same. I only needed to design for the right now.
In truth, things never stay the same and systems must have the flexibility to evolve. Approaching your systems like Lego, adding or taking away pieces as needed, allows organizations to easily reassemble their inner rhythms as strategy shifts. When systems are designed to evolve through modularity, governance, and transparency, organizations stop reacting to change and start moving towards who they want to become.
What’s Next?
To be clear, I’m not advocating for focusing all operations design 100% on a future state. Having constant and significant changes in a short time will erode the trust of an organization, making lasting change much harder.
Small, deliberate shifts in systems and culture build the confidence teams need to see possibility instead of limitation. And when that shift begins to take hold, the question becomes less about what needs fixing today and more about who the organization is choosing to become.
The future state isn’t something Operations reacts to. It’s something we shape. The question is: Who do you want to become?
Wondering whether your systems and processes can keep up with where your business is heading? Let’s talk. I’d love to hear where you want your team to go.