Transforming business capabilities at William Hill

I have engaged in personal learning, a continuing practice, and a professional development journey by conducting a qualitative study based on the paradigm of Action Research. The research journey and learning are synergized and grounded in my lived experiences as an insider researcher in a practice setting, working in the gambling sector at William Hill PLC. The thesis project ‘Transforming Business Capabilities at William Hill’ is an action-inquiry reflective overlay to my business project ‘William Hill Digital Business Architecture’. I aim to embed Business Architecture, an evolving, knowledge-intensive professional discipline that will support senior leaders in their strategic endeavours. Further, my research aims to make my practice viable, useful, and a game-changer to the organization by exploiting the semantics and language of Business Capabilities in a central information system as the basis for business transformation.

This thesis accounts for and has provided a means to demonstrate how my learning is integrated into efforts in practice language development, architecture knowledge management, and a resulting practice transformation process. In practical terms, this has meant the application of research, leveraging Business Capability Management. It is used as a transformative and evaluative device for the benefit of instituting the Business Architecture practice by taking action and doing research, interconnected by critical reflection. Actions taken by way of design thinking, user-centered approaches, and goal-based and agent-oriented activities include improving the understanding of the practice, acknowledging its emergent properties, responding to agile working demands, improving the practice's specification, and improving its operational environment. Praxis included senior stakeholder engagement, identifying opportunities for creative design, artifact development for insights, knowledge sharing, intervention, and altering ways of working. The outcome was ‘bridging’ as a practitioner and researcher, hard engineering and soft social factors.

This research and report provide a synopsis of findings and make a valuable and original contribution to the body of knowledge consumed at William Hill. It is also about my story, personal and professional development, and self-organization while seeking the advancement of pluralism. In this study, I have used a bricolage of Action Research, Action Design Research and Experiential Learning contextualised at William Hill, and I have pushed the design and modelling of business capabilities as modern rhetoric. A contribution is made to academia, the organization, the industry, and professional practice. The research exposes implications and limitations specific to my business setting and is unlikely to provide immediately generalisable information. It, however, highlights the value and other peculiarities of actionable and design knowledge so that the explored concepts, learning, and insights may be further applied and developed by other professionals and scholars.