Understanding the Common Service Data Model (CSDM) in ServiceNow
The Common Service Data Model (CSDM) serves as a unified framework that helps organizations manage and illustrate their services and related data…
Most organizations today are not struggling to identify what needs to change. The harder problem is figuring out how to move important initiatives forward without disrupting the systems, teams, and services the business depends on every day. New capabilities still need to be built, legacy environments still need to be modernized, and the business still has to run.
This is where execution models matter. Parallel Execution Models (PEMs) describe the different ways organizations structure, govern, and resource work so change can move forward alongside core operations. Rather than treating large initiatives as a single, uniform effort, these models recognize that different types of work require different execution approaches depending on risk, urgency, and operational impact.
In practice, change rarely happens in isolation. Improvements to customer experience, internal operations, and supporting technology unfold while existing systems and processes continue to operate, often under increasing pressure.
The four Parallel Execution Models outlined below describe common patterns organizations use to balance progress and stability. Each model reflects a different relationship between new initiatives and existing operations. None is inherently better than the others. The value comes from understanding when each approach is appropriate and what tradeoffs it introduces. In this article, we’ll look at:
Before jumping in to describe each, it should be noted that rarely do any of these PEMs exist in a pure state. It is also entirely possible to graduate or transition from one PEM to another.
Cannibalism is defined as an “ecological interaction” that involves “the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food.” – quite the “interaction,” for sure. In the animal and plant kingdoms, it may well be considered the most aggressive strategy for survival and is often an extreme reaction to threats. It is often driven by over-crowded spaces with many competitors and dwindling sources of nourishment.
In the world of DT, opportunistic cannibalism occurs for many of the same reasons. An organization realizes (often quite suddenly) that its business model (and possibly its products and services) is no longer viable or under serious threat from competitors or radically new applications of technology. Similar to the animal kingdom, when too many competitors are in the same market or too many similar or substitute products are being sold to a customer base, an organization may be willing to take extreme measures.
Pages Jaune (the French Yellow Pages) serves as a prime example of opportunistic cannibalism. Around 2009, Pages Jaune was the market leader of the French Yellow Pages industry. The only problem was that the industry was crumbling . . . the fact was that nobody wanted to thumb through a thick paper phone book when they could find even better information online. As consumers started to use printed Yellow Pages to prop open windows on warm Paris Junes, Pages Jaune print revenues plummeted by more than 10% year over year. The new CEO, Jean-Pierre Remy initially struggled to sell a digital transformation to employees. After all, Pages Jaune was the industry leader, had been successful for most of its history, and had survived other technological and industry shake-ups. Mr. Remy understood that printing paper directories was not Pages Jaune’s forte. Instead, their strength was the ability to connect businesses to local consumers.
Remy boldly and unequivocally declared the old business model of printed books dead. His goal was to have digital revenue account for more than 75% within five years (at the time, it accounted for less than 30%). He also put a freeze on investment in the print directory business model (unless absolutely necessary for survival) during the transition. Remy managed to pull off his great tour de force within a little over four years as digital revenues replaced the losses from the print side of the business. In 2015, Pages Jaunes reported revenue growth for the first time in years.
In the case of Pages Jaune, transformation and cannibalization of the old business model was triggered by the existential threat posed by drastically declining revenue. Not all organizations that choose opportunistic cannibalization are forced into it. For some organizations, cannibalization is more proactive – It is the intentional and radical destruction of the old. For example, Netflix has transformed several times, from a rental DVD-to-consumer provider to a streaming video provider to a content creator and has become a veritable “engine of cannibalization.” Not only did it cannibalize its own model of DVD-to-consumer in favor of streaming, it also intentionally cannibalizes its own content. As one Netflix-original program begins to peak in popularity, Netflix intentionally creates and promotes new content. Although this may have the effect of drawing some customers away from existing content, it also helps Netflix grow the consumer base.
A third leading example of constant cannibalization is Apple. They have intentionally cannibalized the Mac with the iPad, the iPod with the iPhone, and the iPhone with the Apple Watch. Interestingly, in several of these cases, cannibalization turned into complementary products and synergy since many consumers own more than one apple product, including products that provide some crossover functionality. As Steve Jobs aptly said, “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.”
In nature, parasitism occurs when “one organism lives on another organism, is adapted to its way of life, and causes harm to the host.” For a relationship to be strictly parasitic, three conditions must be present, 1) The host can survive without the parasite, 2) The parasite cannot survive without the host, and 3) The host is harmed by the parasite. For example, the roundworm needs the human host to survive; but the human would rather not nurture the roundworm. In fiction, Dracula’s vampirism is purely parasitical.
From a DT perspective, parasitic mutualism can be considered a “kinder, gentler” form of cannibalism. To be sure, the intent is to benefit from the still-lucrative resources of the existing business model for as long as possible. If the existing business model is financially successful, profits and other resources can be used to fund the emerging model. Arguably, almost all PEMs involve some form of parasitic mutualism since new digital models need to be funded and the old business models provide revenue to maintain the business as a going concern.
All metaphors break down at some point. In the natural world, the strategy of the parasite is to preserve the host for as long as possible, even indefinitely. Although incremental harm is done to the host, the parasite incrementally benefits. The opposite is likewise true – Destroying the host means the end of the meal ticket. To be clear, in DT, the intent is to eventually destroy the existing business model in favor of the new. It can be thought of as “slow decay” or “measured destruction.”
For example, the New York Times (NYT), a leader in the newspaper world, was threatened by declining revenue from print-based advertising, which represented a significant revenue stream for print news publications. The NYT predicament was not unique to their company and was distressing to the entire industry. Going against conventional wisdom at the time, NYT decided not only to provide online news content but also to charge for it. This represented a bold experiment and one that carried significant risks. First, establishing the new digital business was not free. In fact, NYT used profits from its existing print business to subsidize the digital business. This meant that for several years, NYT’s overall cost increased since they were effectively running two businesses in parallel – the old print business and the new digital business. Second, although NYT was sure that “going digital” was predicted by consumer demand, it was not clear if or when the old print business would go away. Thus, a radical cannibalization was less apparent than a slower (though still aggressive) transition. All’s well that ends well for NYT – by the end of 2017, print and digital subscription revenue combined was about double its print-based advertising revenue.
The New York Times is a classic example of where bold action and clear direction successfully employed parasitic mutualism in a proactive sense. However, The New York Times consciously chose this approach. To the contrary, for too many organizations, parasitic mutualism becomes the default option when leaders cannot make up their minds regarding and, unfortunately, do not end up with the same level of success (nor come remotely close) to the success of the NYT. As usual, no plan is not much of a plan.
Commensalism is a form of symbiosis in which one organism gains benefits from another organism while the “host” neither benefits nor is harmed. The remora fish is the ocean’s great commensalist. It has adapted its body and habits to attach to larger creatures such as sharks . In addition to hitching a ride on larger, faster fish, the remora benefits by eating the larger creature’s fecal matter. (Nobody ever said nature was pretty.) Although the shark gains no obvious benefits from the remora, it also is not harmed by it. Luckily for the remora, the shark has no interest in eating it.
Commensalism in this context works best when the organization is attempting to gain market share or get a larger slice of the market pie. It also works well when certain consumers are hard to reach through existing channels. For example, a local haberdasher does good business with local clients who shop in-store for hard-to-find clothing accessories. The haberdasher knows that the geographically local market is loyal but relatively small. They also recognize that potential consumers exist outside the local geography and are not able to travel to visit the store in-person. Therefore, the haberdasher opens an online shop where they sell a small subset of their goods. Thus, the online store builds on the haberdasher’s brand and existing business model without compromising it.
It is noteworthy in this case that there is no “place-based” competition between the physical and online stores. Local customers continue to visit the physical shop (and may even prefer the “personal touch” and “old world feel” they get there); online customers only (or primarily) visit the online store. Additionally, note that there is no major diversion of resources from the old model to the new model. In fact, both models peacefully co-exist. Each model could exist without the other.
One could argue that in the scenario presented here, the online store does not truly represent a digital transformation and that it is simply an additional sales channel. This is a fair point; and for this reason, commensalism is often used in channel strategy positioning.
In the biological sciences, some argue that there is no true commensalism. If the remora in some minor way slows down the shark, then isn’t parasitism at work? If the remora removes potentially dangerous bacteria from the shark, isn’t that mutualism? Don’t some of the profits from the physical haberdashery go to support the online store? Technically, all of these can be true . . . but again, organizations are more interested in successful outcomes than academic precision. Which brings us to our fourth and final approach, Symbiotic Synergism.
In symbiotic relationships, organisms live in a close nutritional relationship and rarely live outside of the relationship. In synergistic relationships, two or more organisms act together to produce a substance that none can produce separately. In other words, two organisms work better together than apart. For example, the enjoy a synergistic relationship. When they work together, both are better able to defend themselves from predators.
The anemone stings fish that prey on clownfish. In turn, the clown fish scares away butterfly fish that eat anemones. The hummingbird and the flower likewise share a symbiotic synergistic relationship. The hummingbird relies on the flower for nectar. The flower relies on the hummingbird for pollination.
The basic idea behind symbiotic synergism is that two things combined produce a greater or different result than they could have produced individually. Like peanut butter and chocolate, some things just go better together: 1+1>2.
Commensalism is often used to gain a larger piece of the pie and expand market share, whereas symbiotic synergism can be used to grow the market itself and effectively expand the pie. Symbiotic synergism can be ideal in situations where adjacent or complementary sales channels exist, there is no competition amongst channels, and customers have a preference for multi- or omni-channel sales. For example, this includes customers who want to shop in a physical store sometimes and online at other times.
Sephora, the cosmetics retailer, is a textbook example of this approach. Although they recognize that a critical aspect of selling new make-up is the ability to try it on in a physical store, they also learned that in-store customers are also highly influenced by online and video reviews and recommendations from social media influencers. As part of the design of their mobile application, they allow in-store consumers to scan codes from physical displays which navigates the customer to videos, tutorials, and product reviews. Once a customer becomes familiar with a product, they may decide to re-order the same product from the online store instead of traveling to a physical location. Additionally, for customers regardless of where they are shopping, Sephora created a Virtual Assistant application that allows customers to virtually try on various make-up products. Thus, the physical store business model supports the online business model and vice versa, all aided by digital technology like the Sephora mobile application, Virtual Assistant, and geolocation technology.
A critical aspect of the Sephora business model is that physical stores are not franchised. Sephora is owned by LVMH (the same company that owns Louis-Vuitton, Moet, Hennessy, Tiffany, Christian Dior, and in total about 75 brands). LVMH operates more than 2,600 Sephora locations worldwide, which gives it complete control in terms of the in-store experience and how it interacts with the virtual world. It also means that there is no competition between owners of physical stores and the online store. If that were the case, Sephora would have to re-think how the digital business model could co-exist with the physical store model without cannibalizing it.
The Symbiotic Synergism model also tends to work well when complementary products exist. For example, customers who buy an iPhone are likely to want to listen to music on their phones, which creates an opportunity to sell downloadable music through iTunes. In turn, this creates an “indirect network effect,” where a customer’s use of one product reinforces the use of complementary products. Additionally, the use of complementary products potentially increases customer “switching costs,” which has the result of increasing customer brand loyalty.
Given the focus on sales channels and complementary products, organizations often use some version of symbiotic synergism to achieve improvements in the customer excellence digital position. Real masters not only meet customers where they are by providing omni-channel delivery, they also engage in demand shaping. In other words, these organizations go beyond reactively responding to consumer demand. Instead, they proactively create demand through targeted channel marketing and even individual consumer promotions.
The worst PEM is none at all. Organizations that follow the “no model” approach are either extraordinarily lucky or are no longer in business. Too often, organizations eventually muddle into a model due to fear, procrastination, and ignorance. The result of this approach (or lack thereof) is that the organization has few options for how to execute on digital strategy. Other organizations create or adhere to a PEM, but the model is largely inappropriate to meet the needs of the organization. Generally speaking, fragile models are either poorly defined or too rigid to be practical. Characteristics of fragile models include the following:
The best way to avoid fragile modeling is to assemble a small dedicated team when crafting PEMs. While the team should be small enough to work quickly and make decisions, it should include representation from the larger organization, especially those familiar with organization-critical risks and opportunities. In short, it is less about how many people are on the team and more about who is on it.
Designing Parallel Execution Models with the notion of perishability in mind is another way to avoid fragile execution. Perishability reflects the idea that any model has a useful lifespan and will eventually need to change. Execution models are no exception. Organizations can get into trouble when they become overly attached to a particular approach and continue to pursue it long after it no longer fits their environment.
A more effective mindset is to treat execution models as intentionally temporary. Rather than assuming the optimal model is achievable from the start, organizations can adopt an approach that meets current constraints while planning to evolve as conditions change. For example, an organization may ultimately want to replace an existing business model but recognize that it is too dependent on current revenue streams or lacks the capabilities required to make a sudden shift. In this case, a parasitic mutualism approach may serve as a transitional step, with the explicit intention of moving toward a more cannibalistic model over time.
Similarly, an organization may aspire to a deeply integrated, synergistic execution model but lack the technology maturity or operational readiness to support it. In those situations, a commensalist approach can provide forward momentum while the organization builds the capabilities required to evolve. Viewed this way, execution models are not fixed decisions, but stages in an intentional progression.
Just as there is no single best execution model, there is no universally correct pace of transition. Leaders often gravitate toward one of two extremes: pushing for rapid change, accepting short-term disruption in exchange for speed, or favoring a slower, more cautious approach to reduce risk and uncertainty. In practice, the appropriate pace sits somewhere in between and depends heavily on context.
Several factors consistently influence how quickly an organization can move from one execution model to another.
Demand from customers or end users is often the strongest driver. When expectations change, organizations may have little choice but to respond quickly. In those situations, delaying change can be riskier than acting decisively.
Organizational capabilities also play a critical role. The ability to manage multiple execution models in parallel depends on existing skills, governance structures, and operational maturity. Organizations that lack these foundations may still need to move forward, but should do so with a clear understanding of the constraints they are working within.
Technology maturity can either accelerate or limit the pace of change. While technology alone is rarely the solution, certain execution models are difficult to sustain without sufficient automation, integration, and data visibility. In many cases, improving these capabilities becomes a prerequisite for evolving toward more tightly integrated approaches.
Finally, competitive and market pressures shape timing decisions. The actions of competitors, as well as emerging threats from adjacent industries, can signal when accelerating change is necessary. At the same time, rushing to adopt new models or technologies without considering fit and readiness can introduce unnecessary risk.
Taken together, these factors reinforce the importance of intentional pacing. Moving too quickly or too slowly can both undermine outcomes. Effective organizations evaluate pace as deliberately as they choose execution models, adjusting as conditions change rather than committing blindly to a fixed timeline.
Competitive pressure and emerging technologies inevitably influence how organizations think about execution. In some cases, a competitor’s success with a new capability or operating model creates urgency and forces faster movement. In others, new technologies open opportunities that did not previously exist. Both dynamics can be legitimate signals that change is required.
At the same time, pressure to move should not be confused with pressure to copy. Execution models and technology choices that work well for one organization may be a poor fit for another. Blindly adopting a new approach to keep pace with competitors can introduce as much risk as standing still, particularly when underlying business models, capabilities, or customer expectations differ.
Organizations also face the challenge of separating genuine opportunity from hype. New technologies are often accompanied by compelling promises, aggressive marketing, and a sense of inevitability. Without a corresponding willingness to adapt processes, roles, and decision-making structures, technology adoption alone rarely delivers meaningful results. In these cases, the execution model, not the technology, becomes the limiting factor.
Effective organizations monitor competitors and emerging technologies closely, but respond deliberately. They evaluate how external pressures intersect with their own strategy, capabilities, and execution models before accelerating change. This discipline allows them to act when necessary without being driven by fear or momentum alone.
Organizations that manage change effectively share a common trait: they treat improvement as an ongoing discipline rather than a one-time effort. Success does not signal completion. It becomes the starting point for the next iteration. Execution models that work today are regularly questioned, tested, and refined as conditions evolve.
This mindset requires a tolerance for risk and a willingness to learn from failure. Well-known examples often highlight dramatic successes, but they also obscure the experimentation and missteps that make sustained progress possible. As Jeff Bezos once noted, “If the size of your failures isn’t growing, you’re not going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle.” The lesson is not about failure for its own sake, but about creating room to learn and adapt at meaningful scale.
From an execution perspective, continual improvement means resisting the urge to lock into a single model indefinitely. Organizations that succeed over time revisit their assumptions, reassess the fit between initiatives and execution models, and adjust deliberately rather than reactively. They recognize when an approach that once served them well has reached the end of its usefulness and are prepared to evolve.
In this context, Parallel Execution Models are not static answers. They are tools that support ongoing learning, informed decision-making, and intentional progress. When paired with a culture that values continual improvement, they help organizations move forward with confidence while remaining adaptable to what comes next.
