Business Support: The Missing Operating Capability Between Strategy and Results?

Reflections from the BIG BoK Club: Accountability

June 15, 2026

Published by David Dunning on June 18, 2026

Business Support: The Missing Operating Capability Between Strategy and Results?

Do organisations fail at strategy implementation because people lack ambition, effort or capability? Usually, no.

Strategy development may happen in episodes – planning cycles, board reviews, investment decisions, market resets. That is reality.

The harder problem is that strategic intent then has to be continually translated, prioritised, funded, measured, challenged, adapted and delivered while the organisation is also balancing day-to-day operation, value creation, innovation and change.

Too often, we call this a delivery issue.

But sometimes what really happened is simpler: we threw another imperative over the wall to managers already surrounded by competing imperatives, and expected them to make it work.

At BIG CIC, we are seeing this pattern repeatedly.

Strategy clarity does not always survive contact with the organisation.
Objectives are not always delegated in a way that supports fair accountability.
Measures often track activity rather than value.
Prioritisation is treated as an event rather than an operating capability.
Data is fragmented.
Governance reviews activity, but does not always help leaders make better decisions.
As AI becomes more prominent, the need for a trusted, connected and well-governed information ecosystem becomes even more important.

This is why our July BIG CIC discussion evening explored Business Support as a key enabling capability for strategy implementation and integrated governance.

Not as a panacea.
Not as a new monolithic overhead.
Not as a bigger PMO by another name.

But as a deliberate capability – call it what you like – potentially delivered through a hub-and-spoke model, that helps connect governance, accountability, prioritisation, information, assurance and value tracking across the organisation.

Session Summary

We covered:

Challenge 1 – •Strategy delivery is not just projects – BAU, value creation and change, all compete for leadership, funds, resources and attention.
Challenge 2 – •Support already exists – but it is fragmented across: PMO, finance, strategy, BI, risk, assurance, product, operations, IT delivery support, resource planning, etc.
Challenge 3 – •Who supports the connection of strategy to delivery in your organisation?
BIG offers

The discussion suggested that this gap is best understood as a missing operating capability for strategy implementation via the means of integrated governance.

Within Business Integrated Governance, this is described as Business Support (please note – this is only a label. An organisation can replace it with whichever name it finds most appropriate.)

However, there is a trap with focusing on strategy implementation. It can be tempting to set up a strategic performance review process that supports the delivery of strategy, but that process may not be integrating governance across all decisions and accountable people. The value from BIG is to make sure that we have the governance support built into all these different support systems and that they work together, with the ultimate goal being support of purpose and strategy.

Business Support is not intended to be a large new bureaucracy or a central function that takes control away from existing teams. It is an enabling capability that helps the organisation connect and operate what already exists.

Its role is to:

orchestrate governance
operate agendas and decision cadence
connect objectives, priorities, resources and delivery
maintain relevant information
support clear accountability
manage enabling tools and processes
sustain the wider strategy implementation capability

The most credible model is hub-and-spoke but this of course depends on the organisation current state, culture and structure.

A central hub provides coordination, visibility, common standards and escalation. Existing functions retain their specialist knowledge and local ways of working where appropriate. The aim is not to standardise everything, but to connect what must be connected for the organisation to make coherent decisions.

The discussion also highlighted that Business Support requires an information backbone. Governance cannot operate effectively when objectives, risks, resources, performance and delivery information sit in disconnected systems or use inconsistent definitions.

AI creates a significant opportunity to connect, interpret and surface information that people cannot manage manually – or do not have the time to do manually. But AI does not remove the need for good governance and information design. Without trusted context, AI may produce highly convincing but fundamentally wrong answers.

Business Support therefore needs to be treated as a business capability, not simply an IT or reporting responsibility.

There was also strong agreement that ownership must sit high enough in the organisation to cross functional boundaries. The CEO, board, COO or another senior executive may own and sponsor the capability. Its operation can then be delegated to an empowered Business Support, strategy, portfolio, governance or PMO-led function.

The central conclusion was:

Strategy implementation must be designed into strategy, owned at the top, operated through the organisation, and supported by connected governance, information and accountability.

Without that capability, strategy delivery depends on goodwill, local interpretation and heroic effort.

With it, organisations have a better chance of turning purpose into priorities, priorities into coordinated action, and action into measurable value.

Access the session playlist here

Key Question for Organisations:

In addition to being clear on who is responsible for delivering strategic results, organisations should ask one direct question:

Who is responsible for operating the connection between strategy and results?

If the answer is unclear, the next step is not necessarily to create another function. It is to map the existing support landscape, identify the most damaging gaps, secure executive sponsorship and begin joining up governance, prioritisation, information and accountability around a real strategic need.

For PMOs, strategy offices, finance, risk, assurance and business architecture teams, the opportunity is to help start that conversation.

The question is not simply whether your function wants to become more strategic.

It is whether you are prepared to help your organisation build the capability that integrated governance, including strategy implementation, actually requires.