Commercial clarity fails when nobody designs how the relationship will run.
There is a familiar moment in a large managed-services or outsourcing pursuit.
The contract is nearly complete. The schedules are detailed. Service levels have been negotiated. Credits have been debated. Responsibility matrices, governance forums and escalation clauses have all been written down.
On paper, the relationship looks designed.
Then mobilization begins.
Questions appear almost immediately. Who owns the service end to end? Who can approve a change? What capability is the customer expected to retain? Who prioritizes demand when every request is urgent? Who resolves an issue that crosses several towers? Who owns the data needed to measure an outcome?
The contract may assign obligations. It rarely answers how people will make those obligations work together.
A contract can allocate responsibility. It cannot create the behaviour required to make responsibility work.
This distinction matters because commercial teams often try to solve operating-model ambiguity with more contractual detail. Another clause is added. Another RACI is expanded. Another governance meeting is named.
That can make the agreement more defensible without making the service more operable.
The operating model is the practical design of the relationship. It connects ownership, decision rights, retained capability, governance, information, demand, change and measurement. It determines who makes which decisions, with what evidence, at what speed, and what happens when the environment no longer matches the assumptions made during the sale.
Sellers sometimes hesitate to bring that conversation forward. It can expose that the customer is not yet ready to operate the service they are buying. It can reveal gaps between procurement, technology, operations and the executive sponsor. It can also make a pursuit feel more complicated when everyone is trying to reach signature.
But deferring the complexity does not remove it. It transfers it into transition and delivery, where it becomes slower, more expensive and more political.
I am not suggesting that every detail of a future operating model must be finished before the contract is signed. Some choices properly belong in transition, and any long-term relationship will evolve.
Enough must be understood, however, to test whether the proposition is workable. The parties should know who owns the outcome, which capabilities remain with the customer, where decisions sit, how demand and change will be governed, what information is required, and how performance will be interpreted when the numbers and the lived experience disagree.
These are not delivery questions that happen to come later. They shape scope, price, risk, customer obligations and the credibility of the promised outcome.
The contract should document a working model that both sides understand. It should not be the first place they encounter one.
If the contract is becoming more detailed while the operating model remains vague, I am always happy to compare notes.
