One Apollo Operating Model
Combine empowered ownership with firm-wide collaboration
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 91%
The One Apollo Operating Model combines four cultural mechanisms: innovation, empowerment, merit-based responsibility, and collective execution. Leaders encourage employees to identify opportunities and pursue them within appropriate boundaries rather than waiting for top-down instructions. Responsibility goes to people who can create meaningful impact, reinforcing a meritocratic and entrepreneurial environment. High performance remains an explicit expectation even after the organization becomes successful. To prevent empowered teams from becoming isolated, client situations and strategic goals draw on the capabilities of the wider firm. Shared language such as “we, not me” reinforces that ownership does not mean personal empire-building. Formal forums and informal encounters maintain the connectivity required to exchange information, challenge ideas, and reach stronger answers together.
Origin
Extracted from Masters in Business, where Stephanie Drescher described Apollo’s long-standing cultural themes and its “One Apollo” approach to client situations and organizational goals.
Core principles
- 01Empower people to pursue appropriate opportunities
- 02Allocate responsibility through merit
- 03Sustain high standards after success
- 04Put collective outcomes ahead of personal credit
- 05Bring the full organization to important problems
How to run it
- 1
Set the shared outcome
State what success means for the client, team, or firm before assigning work. Make the collective result more important than ownership of individual tasks.
Pro tip Use simple, repeated language that makes the collaboration norm memorable.
Watch out A vague shared goal allows teams to optimize for incompatible local outcomes.
- 2
Empower accountable owners
Assign substantial responsibility according to capability and give owners room to act. Define boundaries, escalation points, and performance expectations.
Pro tip Pair autonomy with access to senior sponsorship and specialist support.
Watch out Empowerment without clear accountability can produce inconsistent decisions.
- 3
Assemble the full capability set
Identify the functions, geographies, and expertise needed to solve the problem well. Invite those contributors early enough to shape the answer rather than merely approve it.
Pro tip Organize around the outcome instead of the existing reporting lines.
Watch out Adding every possible stakeholder can slow decisions without improving them.
- 4
Create collaborative forums
Use structured meetings and informal encounters to keep information moving between teams. Design physical or remote spaces that encourage useful contact.
Pro tip Include lightweight forums where employees can surface questions before they become formal issues.
Watch out Meetings that lack a purpose or decision path can imitate collaboration without producing it.
- 5
Reward collective high performance
Evaluate individual initiative alongside contributions to the firm-wide result. Celebrate people who strengthen other teams as well as those who lead visible work.
Pro tip Ask contributors to identify who enabled their success behind the scenes.
Watch out Rewarding only visible individual wins will undermine the stated collective culture.
In the wild
Drescher described bringing “One Apollo” to a client situation so that the firm’s combined capabilities, rather than one person or unit, support the desired outcome. The approach preserves individual responsibility while drawing on broader expertise.
→ Clients receive a more integrated answer and employees succeed through shared execution.
A regional leader owns a new retirement product but brings in investment, legal, technology, education, and distribution specialists at the design stage. Each function has clear decisions to make, while all are measured against client suitability and launch quality.
→ The product reaches market with fewer handoff failures and stronger organizational support.
Common mistakes
Confusing empowerment with isolation
Giving someone responsibility does not mean leaving that person without the firm’s expertise. Owners should be able to mobilize help across organizational boundaries.
Using teamwork to blur accountability
Collective execution still requires named owners and explicit decisions. Otherwise “we” can become a way to avoid responsibility.
Letting success reduce intensity
Past performance can weaken curiosity and urgency. The model explicitly maintains a winning, high-performance expectation as the firm grows.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for complex firms whose client outcomes require several teams, specialties, or geographies to collaborate.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for organizations that use empowerment as a substitute for accountability or lack a shared performance standard.
From the transcript
“it's we, not me, And that's really powerful.”
“We manage the firm as a meritocracy, so we want to give people responsibility and let them kind of really kind of have the greatest…”
“We can use that power of the firm to be successful and to allow us all to win.”
From the episode
Why Private Assets Are Essential: Masters in Business with Stephanie Drescher
Stephanie Drescher