Integrate
Handover, and the test of it.
Put it into the organisation so it holds. It runs without us, and it depends on no one person.
In short
What it covers
Training
The people who will run it, taught on it, before we leave.
Cutover
The old way closed deliberately, on a date, with a stated route back if it has to be reopened.
Accountability
Who owns what, visible to whoever answers for it, without having to be asked.
Contingency
What runs when it fails, defined in advance of the conditions that call for it.
The record
The reasoning, not only the instructions. Why it was built this way, so that the next person does not quietly undo it.
The test
What the operation is measured against.
Performance while an adviser is in the room is evidence about the adviser, not the operation. The test of an operating model is whether it holds six months after handover, through an absence, a supplier failure or a change of management, with no one there to correct it in flight.
That is why engagements end. An adviser who has become load-bearing has produced a dependency, not a capability.
The others
Design
What should exist, how it works, and in what order, settled before anything is committed.
Build
Make it. The working thing, not a specification handed to someone else.
Communicate
The record and the telling, for work that has to be understood by people who were not there.
Next
Integration closes the engagement.
It is also commissioned on work the firm did not build, where someone has to make it hold.