We’ve obsessed over compliance, metrics with thresholds, targets to meet - the proxies for success.
But if no one can see the Service, compliance just hides the gaps - makes them invisible.
So we continue to use the proxies without Seeing and enjoy the success.
And if we aren’t feeling that success - what we’re doing must be wrong. But that’s not always the case. We might be on the right path, just not engaging with our Service consumers in the right way. Or perhaps we’re simply not measuring feedback, leaving us feeling ineffectual.
Or perhaps we know nothing at all - because we measure everything. Measuring everything is the same as measuring nothing; in a sea of metrics, the drop of real knowledge is invisible.
I’ve worked with clients who had hundreds of dashboards - mostly ignored - while decisions ran on a three-column spreadsheet. It’s no surprise those decisions were wrapped in caveats and revisited often. Without the right knowledge, how could they be confident?
Without the discipline to focus, we drown in numbers and miss the truth.
Dashboard of Success
Green lights glow; we relax. We point at aligned targets and call it success. But those lights are often just proxies we picked for convenience. They don’t tell us if the Service is trusted - or even used.
Yet that green comforting glow hides the greatest threat: the belief that we’re right. Without clarity, risk multiplies - risk that the Service won’t deliver as expected, and worse still, that we won’t understand why.
We hesitate to ask the human question: Did we deliver what was needed - or just what we could?
Because proxies are easy to measure and defend, while real Services are complex, messy, and require us to talk to people. When proxies stand in for reality, dashboards glow while truth dims.
That’s when the real risks hide in plain sight.
So without inviting human clarity, we forget the true levers for change - the Services themselves.
Seeing Services as Strategic Assets
Services are the real levers of transformation - not the systems beneath them. You can swap components and tweak processes, but value is created in the Service as experienced by humans.
Like gold, the raw material is not the value; meaning and utility are. The worth of a Service is the outcome it reliably delivers, not the inventory of parts that make it possible.
Treat Services as assets in motion. Invest in the flow, protect the trust, and measure credibility in the eyes of those who depend on it.
A Service in motion is a true strategic asset.
If your “strategic asset” vanished tomorrow, how many people would notice - and how quickly?
The Dangerous Myth of Strategy
The Myth
We’ve been led to believe strategy equals control - that alignment guarantees outcomes, and deviation equals failure. It’s neat, defensible, billable - and wrong. Strategy written as compliance becomes a straitjacket; it kills adaptability.
In a world that moves weekly, daily, hourly - a six-month-old strategy is already a relic.
The Alternative
Strategy should be a living guide, not a fixed verdict:
- Model intent
- Measure what matters now
- Adjust in real time
- Let evidence move you
No decision has 100% clarity; good strategy admits uncertainty and designs for course-correction without blame.
Uncertainty must be embedded into the organisation’s mechanics - with a clear guide over what’s acceptable not to know.
As a living guide it must be reviewed and kept alive. Without that regular ritual it quickly shifts into a relic of the past.
When strategy is treated as a Service - observable, owned, and continuously improved - flow becomes possible.
Which brings us to a deeper truth: Strategy isn’t a static document; it’s a way of Seeing in Motion.
And when we can see clearly enough to act, we are already doing strategy.
Seeing in Motion Is Strategy
When we truly see where we’re going, that in itself is a strategy. It’s a set of defining characteristics and perspectives about what we’re doing right now. It can - and will - change. But it’s based on what we know in this moment.
It’s the information guiding the Service - all facets of it - not just the ones we’ve historically measured.
It could be:
- likes on a post
- cash flow
- a customer smiling
- or leaving early on a Friday
Whatever best signals that the Service is genuinely flowing for the humans it serves.
In large-scale Services, we rarely operate at this level of sight. Why? Because we lack a model that integrates complexity into a living representation - one that changes dynamically and supports human-to-human engagement.
It’s like a weather map - always in motion, always partial, but enough to decide whether to sail.
If Seeing is Strategy, OSM is the discipline that makes that sight reliable, repeatable, shared - and ultimately credible.
OSM as the Answer
OSM is my answer to this challenge.
It’s a way of thinking, feeling, modelling, and experiencing Services. Not to be 100% precise. Not to target a single metric. But to create an organic, adaptable model for building credible knowledge about how our Services serve humans.
Not to chase perfection, but to find credible clarity - good enough to act on with confidence.
The point is to have a flexible way of representing the things that matter - the things we should be seeing.
Credible clarity is an asset. It supports confident, human execution.
Because seeing what’s really there, and what we truly care about, is strategy. And it’s one we need to practise far more often.
There are two parts to OSM:
- A behavioural discipline
- A knowledge model
Both work together.
OSM: Thumbprint Framework
The Thumbprint Framework is OSM’s playbook - a set of repeatable ‘moves’ that shape and reshape Services to keep them alive and relevant. Each Thumbprint is unique to the organisation, but the moves are universal.
Move: Clarity
Name the Service by experience, not function - by outcome, not activity. Reframe ‘IT support’ as ‘issue recovery’ so value is measured in restored productivity, not ticket closure time.
Move: Sightlines
Normalise uncertainty; publish what you can see now and your next learning step. Share a “current visibility map” and annotate assumptions - making decisions transparent rather than mysterious.
Move: Flow
Build cadence; inspect one real request end-to-end each fortnight. Run a 30-minute flow replay to spot friction, rework, and credibility gaps - then fix one thing.
(More moves will be explored in later articles.)
OSM: Service Information Base
A representation model for the information we collect about Services.
It’s the minimal map you need to navigate without drowning in detail - just enough to support insight and credibility.
Later articles in this series will show how these two pieces come together into a dynamic framework designed to drive human-centric behaviour into our Service models.
The Promise of Seeing
When we prioritise sight over assumption we can:
- Make decisions grounded in real visibility
- Move at pace with confidence of knowledge, not hope
- Adapt without fear of being “wrong”
- Design and operate Services that genuinely serve
Seeing is not the prelude to strategy. It is strategy.
So ask yourself: What’s the most important thing about your Service that none of your metrics can tell you?
Closing
Sharing this is part of my own journey in building Strategenz and driving a new way of thinking - and if something here resonated, sparked a thought, or challenged how you see things, I’d love to hear it.
Drop a comment, follow along, or share it with someone navigating their own transformation.