Technical debt gets attention because it is visible: slow releases, fragile systems, mounting workarounds. Operating-model debt is quieter, but it is paid every day — in handoffs that lose context, decisions that wait for the wrong person, and processes that made sense at a tenth of the size.

Where it hides

It rarely shows up as a line item. It shows up as the meeting that exists only to reconcile two teams' versions of the truth, or the spreadsheet that quietly became a system of record. The work still gets done; it just costs more attention than it should.

Paying it down

You do not fix an operating model with a reorganisation. You fix it by being clear about the outcomes each team owns, the decisions they are trusted to make, and the information they need to make them. Technology then has something honest to support, rather than a set of habits to automate.

The goal is not a perfect model. It is a model that the organisation can actually run — and change again when it needs to.