Template H2 · CMO / Head of Digital
Marketing Operating Model Sheet.
In-house, agency, freelance or automated: who owns what, now that execution costs have fallen and accountability has not.
The decision this template protects
What stays inside, what goes outside, what the machine does, and who is accountable for each.
CMO / Head of Digital
Main Course Module 7 · Operating model
Version 1.0 · 19 August 2026
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Before you start, you need
What has to be true first.
- An honest list of every capability the function needs.
- Current cost and quality of each.
- A view on which capabilities are becoming commoditised.
What this template will not do for you
Its stated limits.
- It will not tell you the right model. It makes the trade-offs explicit and named.
- It has a short half-life while automation capability moves. Check the review date.
- It does not cost the transition. That is a separate finance exercise.
What is in it
4 sections, and what each one makes you write down.
01
Capability allocation
- Capability
- In-house
- Agency
- Freelance
- Automated
- Accountable person
02
The decision rule
03
What automation genuinely changes
- Task
- Automatable now
- What still needs a person
- Risk if nobody checks
04
The transition
- Change
Judgment prompts
Questions the template makes you answer.
- Which capability have you outsourced that you no longer understand well enough to evaluate?
- If your main agency resigned tomorrow, what would stop?
- Which task have you automated without naming who is accountable for its output?
- Are you optimising for cost in a function where being wrong is the expensive part?
The defensible output
What you are left holding.
An allocation with a named accountable person for every capability, including the automated ones, and a stated do-not-outsource list.
Published open. Copy it, adapt it, use it on client work. If you pass it on, keep the attribution line on it.
More from the library
Sixty-five instruments, eighteen published open.
Each one names the decision it protects, states what it will not do, and ends in something you could defend six months later.