Defining a Data Operating Model to Guide Transformation
Project Overview
Our client, a leading global healthcare company, faced a critical inflection point: their data landscape no longer reflected the scale of ambition or complexity of the environment.
This common but critical challenge meant that different teams had conflicting priorities, existing approaches were more reactive than strategic, and there was no whole system North Star to anchor direction. Without alignment on a clear vision, milestones and critical data operating model elements, future initiatives risked fragmentation, inefficiency and missed opportunities. The leadership team needed a practical, structured way to create clarity, build consensus and align on a roadmap to ensure meaningful change.
Our Solution
Afiniti partnered with the client to design and deliver a three-day immersive workshop, delivering:
- Planning, delegate pre-reading and facilitation content based around a creative mountaineering theme.
- Day 1 – Framing the Future: We kicked off by establishing a North Star vision – defining the outcomes and major milestones the function needed to achieve in the coming years. Using tools like force field analysis and SWOT, the team evaluated the current ‘As Is’ state. This provided the foundation for prioritising the most critical operating model elements to focus on in subsequent sessions.
- Day 2 – Designing the Data Operating Model: With clarity on the vision and roadmap, we shifted into design. The team worked in iterative sessions to explore each priority element of the data operating model, brainstorming what the future should look like and identifying the key shifts required to close the gap between current and future state. This created a clear backlog of initiatives anchored in the milestones set on Day 1.
- Day 3 – From Design to Action: The final day combined design with execution planning. We validated initiatives, confirmed ownership and established clear priorities. By the end of the session, the team had an activation plan with immediate quick wins and a pathway to communicate outcomes and next steps to key stakeholders.
- Clear outputs to enable team ownership and senior level engagement to set the team up for delivery.
The Differences We Made
Afiniti’s approach went beyond theory. By blending facilitation expertise with proven tools, we:
- Created alignment: People left with a shared vision and operating model framework they could all stand behind.
- Enabled clarity: Prioritisation ensured focus on the most critical elements, cutting through noise.
- Drove action: The workshop didn’t stop at ideas. The team walked away with an actionable backlog, ownership assigned and an activation plan.
In just three days, Afiniti transformed ambiguity into clarity, misalignment into consensus and aspirations into a practical roadmap for delivery with a data operating model design that was rooted in industry best practices, maturity assessments, and an honest evaluation of the current landscape, balancing internal ambition with external reality.
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