The Method
Ten steps. Three phases. Constraints found, ranked, addressed.
Optimize10 is built around a simple discipline: find the small number of things that are actually limiting the organisation, rank them, fix those first, and treat operational risk as part of the design — not a control added once the design is finished.
Phase 1 — Foundation
Before any diagnosis begins, the organisation has to agree what it's trying to achieve, what it actually knows versus assumes, and whether it can absorb the change it's about to ask for.
1Strategy & Objectives
Establish a clear, shared understanding of what the organisation is trying to achieve and why — before any analysis begins.
2Building the Evidence Base
Build the evidence base and map the stakeholder landscape — creating the shared factual baseline that informs every subsequent step.
3Inside the Box
A deliberate inversion of outside-the-box thinking: surface the knowledge held by the people who do the work, to validate the maturity model and learn what makes the organisation tick.
Phase 2 — Diagnosis & Design
The analytical heart of the method: map what's really happening, find the small set of constraints worth solving, then design a future state that removes them rather than just describing it more efficiently.
4Present Mode of Operation (AS-IS)
Establish a truthful picture of how work is actually done today — not how it’s documented, and not how it’s supposed to work.
5Systematic Analysis
Identify the ranked set of constraints — the small number of factors that, addressed together, would release the most value from the operation.
6Future Mode of Operation (TO-BE)
Design the future state that addresses the primary constraints — and embed operational risk management as a design discipline, not a control bolted on at the end.
7Target Operating Model (TOM)
Translate the future mode of operation into the organisational design, workforce planning, governance and sourcing model that makes the new way of working the default.
Phase 3 — Delivery
A good design still has to survive contact with a delivery plan, a governance forum, and the months and years after go-live when most benefits quietly erode if nobody's watching.
8Change Roadmap & Plan
Translate the design into a sequenced, dependency-led roadmap and a credible delivery plan, owned by the people who will execute it.
9Change Mobilisation & Execution
Build and activate the network of sponsors, change agents and local champions — and deliver the change through them.
10Review & Embed
Prove improvement has held, embed the change into the organisation’s operating rhythm and trigger the next cycle.
Governance, throughout
Each phase ends at a formal gate rather than an informal nod to move on: Proceed, Recycle or Stop at the Phase 1 and Phase 2 Gates, and Release or Recycle at the Release Gate that closes the programme. A separate portfolio-level forum — the Prioritisation Council — sits alongside the lifecycle to resolve competing claims on the organisation's finite transformation capacity, so individual programmes aren't left to fight that battle on their own.
