STACK
Strategy. Transformation. Automation. Content. Knowledge.
The first integrated operating model for enterprise services organizations. Every large company with product-oriented services operations needs this. Most don't know it yet.
The Problem STACK Solves
Walk into any large enterprise services organization (HR Operations, IT Service Management, Finance Shared Services, Customer Operations). You will find the same five functions operating as disconnected silos:
- A strategy team that writes plans nobody executes
- A transformation team that runs change programs disconnected from the tools
- An automation team that deploys technology without redesigning the work
- A content team that produces documents nobody reads
- A knowledge management function that exists on paper but not in practice
These five capabilities are deeply interdependent. Strategy without transformation capability is a PowerPoint. Automation without content is a tool nobody knows how to use. Transformation without knowledge capture means you solve the same problems repeatedly.
Individual task speedups from AI are not translating into organizational throughput. McKinsey's 2025 research confirms what practitioners already know: operating model and integration discipline, not tool adoption alone, are the binding constraints.
STACK says: these are not five teams. They are one system. Run them as one.
The Five Pillars
Strategy
Where are we going and why? Strategy sets the direction for the services organization: what capabilities to build, what to sunset, how to allocate resources across the other four pillars. Without Strategy, the other pillars optimize locally but drift globally.
Does your services org have a strategy that is distinct from the company strategy? Or does it just execute whatever comes in?
Transformation
How do we change how we work? Transformation is the muscle that redesigns processes, redefines roles, and manages the organizational change required to absorb new capabilities. Most services orgs have a strategy and have automation tools. They lack the institutional capability to actually transform.
When you launch a new tool, do you also redesign the workflow around it? Or do you layer the tool on top of the old process?
Automation
What can machines do instead of people? Automation in STACK operates on two tracks. First-party (1P): custom AI solutions built for your specific needs (this is the AI Garage at Google). Third-party (3P): enterprise platforms like Workday, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Brightspot configured and integrated for your workflows. Most organizations do 3P well and 1P poorly. The best do both.
Do you have a team that builds custom AI for your specific operations? Or do you only configure vendor platforms?
Content
What do we know and how do we share it? Content is the most neglected pillar. Every services organization produces enormous amounts of knowledge: policies, procedures, FAQs, training materials, case resolutions. In most orgs, this content is scattered across wikis, shared drives, and people's heads. It degrades over time. Nobody owns it.
If a new employee joined your team today, could they find every policy and procedure they need within a day? Or would they spend weeks asking around?
Knowledge
How does the organization learn and retain what it knows? Knowledge goes beyond content. It is the system by which the organization captures lessons, identifies patterns, and feeds those back into better decisions. Content is the artifact. Knowledge is the circulation system that keeps it alive and useful.
When your team solves a hard problem, does the solution become part of the system? Or does it live in one person's memory?
The Automation Dual Track: 1P and 3P
Custom AI Solutions
Built by your team for your specific problems. At Google, this is the AI Garage: a cross-functional team that builds bespoke AI solutions for People Operations workflows that no vendor product addresses.
1P is where competitive advantage lives. Your vendor's AI is available to your competitors too. Your custom AI is not.
Enterprise Platforms
Workday, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Brightspot, and their ecosystems. These handle the 80% of operations that is standard across industries: payroll, case management, workflows, CMS.
3P is table stakes. The question is not whether you use these platforms. The question is whether you configure them to match your redesigned workflows or force your workflows into the vendor's defaults.
Where STACK Came From
STACK was invented at Google to solve a specific problem: People Operations at a 200,000-person company had world-class individual capabilities (great strategy team, great automation team, great content team) but they operated as separate workstreams. The result was a classic systems problem: each part was optimized but the whole was not.
The fix was architectural: stop treating these as five teams and start treating them as five pillars of one integrated operating model. One leader. One roadmap. One system.
The insight is transferable. Every enterprise with a services organization (HR Ops, IT Service Management, Finance Shared Services, Customer Operations) has this same fragmentation. STACK is how you fix it.
Start with measuring your metabolism
The OMI assessment measures the Transformation and Automation dimensions of STACK. It is the fastest way to understand where your services organization is stuck.
Take the OMI Assessment