Beyond the Promise: organisational archetypes

This companion tool builds on the insights and patterns explored in Beyond the Promise.

That report drew on sector-wide survey responses to uncover the recurring challenges cultural organisations face in delivering meaningful, impactful digital work.

From the survey responses, several recurring organisational patterns, or archetypes, begin to emerge. These archetypes don’t represent strict categories or fixed identities, but instead could be useful lenses for understanding the dynamics at play in how digital work is approached in your organisation.

You may not see your organisation perfectly reflected in just one archetype and that’s expected. Most organisations contain elements of several archetypes, depending on context, team, or project. The goal here isn’t to label, but to offer a way of thinking about the cultural, structural, and strategic factors that shape digital success (and struggles).

The archetypes:

The Siloed Giant:

• Description: A large organisation with fragmented delivery, where digital sits in silos and lacks shared ownership or alignment with wider goals.
• Action: If you recognise your organisation here, it may mean you should try to open up conversations across departments, build shared ownership of digital projects, and shift from isolated delivery to joined-up strategy.

The Directionless Builder:

• Description: Moves quickly from idea to delivery without clear outcomes or foundations; innovation is high but planning and follow-through are weak.
• Action: If this feels familiar, this could be a cue to pause and put stronger foundations in place by clarifying outcomes, testing assumptions, and aligning your digital work with real, provable user and organisational needs.

The Overwhelmed Improviser:

• Description: Stretched teams rely on short-term fixes to deliver digital work, often without the structure, skills, or time to embed lasting change.
• Action: Spotting yourself in this archetype can mean you need to try and make the case for more realistic pacing, clearer roles, and an investment in people and process, not just delivery.

The Centralised Bottleneck:

• Description: Decision-making is concentrated in one individual or team, limiting transparency, engagement, and sustainable progress.
• Action: If your organisation fits this pattern, it might be time to widen involvement in digital decision-making, reduce dependency on individuals, and create more transparent, shared processes.

The Cultural Holdout:

• Description: Digital is marginalised or resisted, it's seen as a bolt-on rather than a core part of the organisation’s mission or culture.
• Action: If this feel true, naming it can help surface underlying resistance, start to build bridges between digital and non-digital teams, and reframe digital as a shared tool for delivering your mission.

The Illusion of Success:

• Description: Projects launch successfully on paper, but don’t result in meaningful change, delivery alone is mistaken for real progress.
• Action: Recognising this dynamic can prompt your team to go beyond focusing only on that ‘launch moment’, try to move to embedding digital into real-world workflows, listening to users, and redefining success around impact.

The Nimble Engine Room:

• Description: A small, agile team delivers impressive digital work, but success is person-dependent and difficult to sustain or scale.
• Action: If this resonates, it may be time to protect what’s working by spreading knowledge, documenting decisions, and building support around your core team to reduce burnout and key-person risk.

How to use the archetypes

Each archetype that follows is drawn directly from the survey responses. They highlight different organisational patterns, from siloed giants to nimble teams.

For each one described below, you’ll find a short summary, defining traits, common pitfalls, typical behaviours, and reflection prompts, plus some practical suggestions that might help shift things forward.

These aren’t case studies or critiques, they’re patterns. Use them to spark internal conversations, challenge assumptions, reflect with your team, or reframe how you think about your own digital work.

The Siloed Giant

“A big ship with many captains but no shared map.”

Key characteristics:

• Large or very large organisations
• Moderate digital maturity (“structured but siloed”)
• Digital work typically ‘sits in’ and is led by a single department, rather than shared across the organisation
• Partial strategic alignment but poor cross-organisational buy-in

Common pitfalls:

• Departmental silos undermine shared vision
• Delivery teams isolated or unsupported
• Valuable discovery work is ignored by leadership
• Digital seen as a task, not a transformation

Typical digital behaviours:

• Delivery-focused over outcomes-focused
• The team that ‘does digital’ often carries the weight alone
• Strategy exists on paper but lacks teeth

Spot the signs:

• Do digital projects get handed over “up the chain” for sign-off without ongoing leadership involvement?
• Does each team have its own understanding of digital success?
• Is there shared ownership of digital projects, or isolated responsibility?
• Are user needs acknowledged but not acted on?
• Are there multiple overlapping tools or platforms serving similar functions in different departments?
• Do cross-departmental conversations about digital feel awkward, territorial, or avoided altogether?
• Are project briefs and scoping documents written by one team, with little chance for collaboration or iteration?
• Do project teams reinvent the wheel because insights from previous initiatives weren’t shared or remembered?

What might make a difference:

• Create cross-functional teams with shared accountability
• Use small pilot projects to break down silos
• Bring leadership into user insight sessions
• Align digital goals with organisational mission

The Directionless Builder

“Running before walking, without a map or compass.”

Key characteristics:

• Medium to large organisations in transition
• Digital maturity is developing or inconsistent
• Eager to build but unclear on outcomes
• Pressure to innovate without adequate foundations

Common pitfalls:

• Jumping to delivery before validating user needs
• No defined success criteria
• Projects derailed by shifting leadership or priorities
• Tendency to “launch and move on”

Typical digital behaviours:

• Commissioning large builds without planning for usage or maintenance
• Mistaking activity for progress
• Stakeholder misalignment from the outset

Spot the signs:

• Is there excitement about tools and platforms, but vagueness about how they'll be used or why?
• Are briefs high-level and visionary, but lacking in concrete user insight?
• Do teams frequently say “we’ll figure that out later” when asked about maintenance or long-term use?
• Are projects delivered without knowing how to sustain them?
• Do you feel reactive rather than strategic in digital work?
• Are internal teams struggling to keep up with external expectations?
• Are frontline teams surprised by digital projects that are meant to support them?

What might make a difference:

• Build in time for user testing and discovery to ground your work in actual need(s)
• Define what ‘minimum viable success’ means to you, on each project
• Align digital thinking with organisational strategy before delivery
• Stop and reflect before the next brief is written

The Overwhelmed Improviser

“Trying to assemble the plane mid-flight.”

Key characteristics

• Medium-sized organisations, often reliant on project-based funding
• Digital maturity is developing, but internal skills are limited
• Heavy reliance on external partners for delivery
• Digital is used functionally, rather than as a lever for transformation

Common pitfalls

• The 'people' aspects of resourcing is overlooked or underfunded
• Decisions made under pressure, with little time for reflection
• Tech is implemented without the accompanying and necessary cultural shifts
• Tools and platforms are frequently abandoned or poorly adopted

Typical digital behaviours

• Rapid changes in scope during projects
• Constant reactive mode, firefighting instead of planning
• Lack of post-launch ownership and unclear accountability

Spot the signs

• Are your projects regularly pivoting mid-way through delivery?
• Do teams feel under-supported or stretched too thin?
• Is there confusion about who owns what after launch?
• Is tech support often informal e.g. one staff member becoming the go-to by default, not design?
• Are tools and platforms in place but rarely used effectively?
• Do you rely on the same few external suppliers repeatedly because no time exists to explore alternatives?
• Are new tools launched before teams have had a chance to understand or adapt to them?
• Are you making platform choices based on speed or convenience rather than long-term fit?

What might make a difference

• Budget time for thinking, not just delivery
• Clarify roles and responsibilities from the outset
• Take a systems-view when selecting or implementing new tools
• Build incrementally and embed change deeply, not quickly

The Centralised Bottleneck

“One decision-maker, many consequences.”

Key characteristics:

• Larger organisations with top-heavy governance
• Digital strategy exists but is 'top down' and controlled by a few, not shared and owned by all
• Hierarchical, with low digital fluency beyond one team or individual
• Projects are often initiated or cancelled based on personal preferences

Common pitfalls:

• Key decisions are made unilaterally
• Little transparency in supplier selection
• Internal resistance grows due to a lack of wider involvement

Typical digital behaviours:

• Project value is often questioned mid-project
• Delivery is undermined by politics
• Teams do not trust in or understand digital goals

Spot the signs:

• Is decision-making concentrated in a single individual or department?
• Are important projects cancelled or delayed late in the process?
• Do teams feel left out of key conversations or decisions?
• Are briefs and priorities frequently rewritten to reflect leadership changes?
• Is there low confidence in digital goals outside the central decision-maker’s circle?
• Are suppliers chosen without a clear or open selection process?
• Do projects stall when a key individual is unavailable?
• Is feedback from teams or users often ignored or undervalued?

What might make a difference:

• Establish distributed governance for digital work
• Include wider teams in shaping briefs and evaluating suppliers
• Run transparent processes for vendor selection
• Build internal digital champions across departments

The Cultural Holdout

“Digital is tolerated, not embraced.”

Key characteristics:

• Any size organisation with legacy ways of working
• Digital maturity exists on paper but not in practice
• Strategic leaders pay lip service to digital
• New digital roles or initiatives are seen as external threats or distractions

Common pitfalls:

• Cultural resistance to change
• Digital excluded from core planning processes
• Internal expertise undervalued or sidelined
• Strong personalities or politics block progress

Typical digital behaviours:

• Passive-aggressive disengagement from projects
• Discovery ignored or “presented in isolation”
• Success quietly buried or repackaged and claimed by others

Spot the signs:

• Do digital projects need to be reframed using non-digital language to gain traction or approval?
• Are digital leads excluded from key meetings or strategic planning conversations? Are digital teams seen as outsiders or “other”?
• Do new ideas get quietly parked by middle management?
• Is digital seen as a “service department” rather than a strategic partner?
• Are digital roles poorly defined, frequently changing, or hard to recruit into?
• Do long-standing staff privately or publicly question the value of digital initiatives?
• Are digital goals routinely deprioritised?
• Does real work happen around, not with, digital?
• Are digital achievements unacknowledged, repackaged, or credited elsewhere?
• Is there a gap between what leadership says about digital and what teams experience?

What might make a difference:

• Create conversations across and between teams about digital ambitions
• Reward internal innovation and collaboration
• Frame digital change as delivering your mission, not something that is technology-driven
• Acknowledge resistance and work with it, not against it

The Illusion of Success

“Box ticked. Problem remains.”

Key characteristics:

• Large organisations with structured delivery processes
• Good at completing projects, poor at embedding them
• Outcomes defined by milestones, not impact
• Teams congratulated for launching, but little changes for users

Common pitfalls:

• Mistaking completion for success
• Deliverables valued over adoption and impact
• User needs acknowledged but not designed for
• Work done in isolation from core services

Typical digital behaviours:

• “Discovery done” but not acted on
• Launch metrics matter more than long-term use
• Problems resurface because root causes weren’t addressed

Spot the signs:

• Do digital projects feel finished but don’t change anything?
• Do you prioritise deliverables over outcomes?
• Are the same issues resurfacing despite new tools?
• Are “success stories” polished for funders, but quietly questioned internally?
• Is there a flurry of activity before launch, and silence after?
• Do post-launch reviews focus on timelines and budgets, not user experience or real-world change?
• Do teams hesitate to question whether a project worked because it was already declared a success?
• Do users report confusion, workaround habits, or unmet needs even after major projects conclude?

What might make a difference:

• Redefine success as adoption and impact, not just delivery
• Build continuous feedback loops from users
• Align digital with real-world problems your teams and users face
• Use retrospective reviews to improve next time

The Nimble Engine Room

“Small team, big impact - until someone burns out.”

Key characteristics:

• Small or medium-sized organisations 
• Surprisingly high digital confidence
• Agile, collaborative working culture
• Strong internal advocates or digital champions

Common pitfalls:

• Overdependence on 1-2 people to lead all digital efforts
• Risk of burnout or sudden capability loss
• Limited budget or staff to scale digital successes
• Digital sometimes seen as "x person’s thing" rather than a shared area of practice

Typical digital behaviours:

• User-led, iterative, open to experimentation
• Strong alignment between values and digital practice
• High-impact results from modest investments
• Limited formal documentation or succession planning

Spot the signs:

• Are your wins shared and understood across the organisation?
• Do colleagues refer to digital work as “ask [person’s name]” rather than as a shared responsibility?
• Is there a backlog of great ideas or opportunities that can’t be pursued due to lack of capacity?
• Are processes informal, relying on memory or habit rather than documentation?
• Do key digital projects pause when a single person is on leave or in high demand?
• Would your digital strategy continue if your ‘digital person’ left?
• Is the same person expected to lead strategy, delivery, troubleshooting, and training?
• Are digital roles poorly understood outside the team, leading to unrealistic expectations?

What might make a difference:

• Document learnings and decisions to reduce key-person risk
• Spread digital knowledge through mentoring or internal workshops
• Build allies at board and leadership level
• Celebrate small wins to build organisation-wide understanding, regular ‘show and tell’ sessions could be a valuable way to engage colleagues

Closing thoughts and next steps

No organisation is just one thing. These archetypes are here to help you notice patterns, not to box you in, but to offer language for things you might already feel.

If something here felt familiar, take a moment to pause with it. Share it with a colleague. Ask yourself: “are we doing this because we know it works, or because it’s what we’ve always done?”

You don’t need a big plan to start a different kind of conversation.

If you’re reflecting on where your organisation sits, or how to move forward, I’d be happy to help. Whether you’re looking for a sounding board, a workshop, or just a conversation, get in touch.