Operating the Strategy Series with Cairo Walker, Head of Apac, Omnia Digital Workplace

Strategy Lives in the Work, Not the Slides In strategy conversations, it’s easy to focus on the plan: the vision, the roadmap, the PowerPoint. But as Cairo Walker, Head of APAC at Omnia, makes clear in this interview, strategy rarely fails because the idea was wrong. It fails because the organisation couldn’t operate it.

Following a merger of two software companies, Cairo was tasked with bringing together very different ways of working across the APAC region. Rather than treating strategy as a document to be rolled out, she approached it as a system to be designed. One that shaped how decisions were made, how work flowed end to end, and how people experienced their day-to-day roles.

A central bet in this transformation was scaling a customer-centred, consulting-led approach beyond professional services and across sales, delivery, and customer success. That meant shifting away from functional hand-offs and towards shared accountability for outcomes. Not “sales does their bit, delivery does theirs,” but one joined-up system experienced by clients as a single business.

What stands out is how deliberately Cairo ties strategy to capability. Consulting at this level, she notes, isn’t about executing tasks, it’s about judgement, confidence, and context. Those capabilities can’t be assumed just because the strategy demands them. They have to be built, supported, and, at times, protected through difficult decisions around role fit and expectations.

The hardest moments didn’t come from lack of clarity on direction, but from pressure: scaling the model while delivering client work, migrating customers to a new product, and resisting the temptation to lower the bar for the sake of speed. In those moments, leadership mattered more than frameworks. Mentoring, coaching, visible decision-making, and being honest early about capability were what unlocked progress.

Cairo’s reflections are especially relevant for leaders navigating transformation in complex, fast-moving environments. Her core insight is simple but often overlooked: strategy doesn’t live in the plan, it lives in how people work. If you design the operating system well, the outcomes follow. If you don’t, no amount of intent will save you.

Watch the full interview below to hear Cairo unpack what it really takes to turn strategy into results, and why removing friction is often the most important leadership move you can make.