Every credible consulting or operating partnership rests on a senior buyer's confidence that they understand what they are signing up to. This page exists to give you that confidence. It is the operational view of an Alternative Path engagement: the phases, the deliverables, the cadences, the decision rights, and the senior accountability structure that holds the work together.
Most engagements run through four phases in sequence. Smaller engagements may compress the first two and skip the fourth. Multi-year engagements move through all four and then iterate. What does not change is the structure: every phase has a defined output and a defined timeline, and the Practice Lead is accountable for both.
The diagnostic is a structured examination of the operating function in question: current capability, current performance, the gap to the standard you need it to operate at, and the path between the two. It is not a sales motion. It is a paid, scoped piece of work that produces a usable answer regardless of whether the engagement continues.
The design phase converts the diagnostic's recommendation into a blueprint. Roles, decision rights, performance measures, escalation paths, tooling architecture, and hiring sequence are all settled in this phase. By the end of it, the client has a document that tells them exactly what the future-state function looks like, who does what inside it, and how it will be built.
The build phase is where the operating model becomes operational reality. The team is assembled, the processes are stood up, the tooling is integrated, and the function transitions from concept to working capability. This is the longest and most operationally intense phase. The Practice Lead is engaged throughout, and the senior client leader has a single point of accountability for the standard the function delivers against.
The fourth phase is where most engagements with other firms quietly end. The team is in place, the deliverables are happening, and the firm moves on. We treat this phase as the one that matters most. Distributed teams either compound momentum or quietly lose it, and the difference is the operating discipline applied after the launch. Quarterly capability reviews, ongoing performance measurement, and the Practice Lead's continued engagement turn the function from a working capability into a compounding one.
The diagnostic is the most reliable predictor of whether the rest of the engagement will succeed. We treat it accordingly: as a structured, methodological piece of work with explicit examination criteria and a usable output, not as an entry point to a sales conversation. Most diagnostics produce a decision document that the senior reader can take to a board or executive team and act on, even if the engagement does not continue beyond this phase.
Org structure, role definitions, decision rights, accountability lines, and the integration points with the rest of the business.
What the function does today, benchmarked against what peer firms at your scale do, and against the standard your strategic intent requires.
Compliance environment, control framework, technology risk, and the operational risk concentrations that need to be addressed.
The systems supporting the function today, their fit for purpose, and the decisions that need to be made about modernisation, consolidation, or replacement.
How the function is measured today, whether those measures capture what good looks like, and what the framework should be going forward.
Headcount mix, seniority distribution, and the capability gaps that will need to be closed.
A decision document covering four things:
A defensible articulation of the current state, in the language a senior leader would use to describe it to their board
A clear set of decisions for the senior team to make, with options and trade-offs laid out
A future-state recommendation with explicit reasoning
A phased path between current state and future state, with timeline, sequence, and resource requirements
Even if the engagement does not continue beyond the diagnostic, the senior team walks away with a usable answer. We have run diagnostics for clients who have then chosen to do the work themselves, who have chosen to engage another firm for delivery, and who have decided the right answer is no engagement at all. In every case, the diagnostic produced something the senior team could act on. That is the standard the methodology is held to.
The single most common failure mode in distributed operating engagements is staffing a team without first settling what the team is supposed to do, who decides what, and how performance will be measured. We refuse to begin staffing until those questions are answered. The operating model design phase exists to answer them, and the framework we use to do it is consistent across engagements.
Not headcount, but actual roles with defined scope, accountability, and reporting lines. The Practice Lead is named explicitly. Senior, mid, and junior roles are differentiated by responsibility, not by title.
Who decides what, who is consulted, who is informed. Captured in a structured RACI or equivalent that resolves the ambiguity around shared decisions before it becomes a problem.
What good looks like, measured how. Both leading and lagging indicators. Reviewed quarterly at minimum.
When something goes wrong, the route is named. Escalation criteria are defined. The Practice Lead is the senior escalation point, and the client has a named senior contact for any issue that exceeds that.
The systems supporting the function, their integration points, and the operational hygiene required to keep them trusted. Vendor decisions are made with explicit reasoning.
Which roles go first, which depend on others, and the criteria that signal when each role is ready to be hired against.
A typical operating model recommendation produces a slide deck. The framework above produces an operational specification that a delivery team can build against without further interpretation. The difference is deliberate: we are accountable for whether the function works, not just for whether the design is defensible.
The cadence of an engagement is the most concrete signal of how a firm actually operates. Below is the rhythm clients work with us through, by week, month, and quarter.
Day-to-day delivery, team management, operational decisions within the agreed scope, performance management of the delivery team, and the continuous improvement of how the function operates.
Strategic direction, scope changes, hiring sign-off (in most engagement models), and the executive sponsorship that gives the function authority inside the organisation.
The capability roadmap, tooling decisions, performance targets, and any changes to the operating model.
The single most distinctive structural choice we have made as a firm is to make Practice Lead engagement non-negotiable across every phase of an engagement. The Practice Lead is not an account manager. They are a senior practitioner with a decade or more of operating tenure in the discipline they advise, and they are accountable for the standard the function delivers against.
The Practice Lead is named in the first conversation and stays the same person through the engagement. There is no "engagement transition" from a senior partner to a junior delivery team.
The Practice Lead attends every quarterly review without exception. This is the cadence at which strategic direction is checked and the operating model is examined for fit.
Any client concern that cannot be resolved by the delivery team is escalated to the Practice Lead. There is no other escalation route inside AP.
The Practice Lead is the senior internal owner of the function. If the function is not operating at the standard the design defined, the Practice Lead is the person accountable for diagnosing why and fixing it.
Senior team changes inside an AP delivery team are reviewed and signed off by the Practice Lead. Junior changes happen within the team. Senior changes do not happen without the Practice Lead's involvement.
The Practice Lead is the senior internal architect of how the function evolves over time. The roadmap is co-designed with the client's senior leadership and the Practice Lead.
A single, named senior point of contact who has been engaged from the first conversation, knows the operating context, and is accountable for the standard the function operates at. The structural complexity of managing a distributed team is concentrated in one relationship with the Practice Lead, rather than being distributed across multiple firm contacts.
Most engagements begin with a thirty-minute conversation with a Practice Lead.
We use the time to understand the question you are trying to answer and share what we have seen at similar firms. If there is a fit, we will propose a focused diagnostic with a usable answer in weeks.
If a diagnostic is not the right starting point, we will say so. If your team is better placed to do the work, we will say that too.