Aviation

How a major international airport co-created the partnership its new IT Operating Model needed, in a single day

How a major international airport co-created the partnership its new IT Operating Model needed, in a single day

A major international airport was rolling out a new IT Operating Model (ITOM), and everyone knew the model would only ever be as good as the relationship behind it. The business felt like it was handing IT a list and waiting; I&T felt like it was forever saying no. So before launching processes and structures at people, we did the human work first. As a people-first organisation, that's our instinct, and here it was the whole point. People-first meant a Business and I&T Collaboration Day where the two sides built the partnership together, in the same room. Execution Integrity meant the day wasn't a talking shop: it produced clear, observable requests and firm commitments that fed straight into the operating model. And Behaviour Risk Management (BER) meant naming the real risk out loud, that without changed behaviours on both sides, the shiny new ITOM would just be a diagram while everyone carried on as before. We prepared by interviewing more than twenty business directors first, so nobody walked in cold. The day itself moved from defining what partnership means, to telling honest stories about change, to a structured round of requests and agreements. The output was a set of shared commitments and a clear “what's different on Monday”. Here's how it worked.