The strength of ambidexterity lies in coordinating the firm’s strategy with its resources and capabilities, such as managerial mechanisms, intellectual capital architecture and human resource management practices. Utilising a strategy as practice approach and focussing on actual actions taken over time by managers, this study brings to light as to how these actors operationalise ambidexterity. Also, the study found a strong relationship between operationalised ambidexterity and performance whereas a priori determination of ambidexterity in the planning stage had no relationship with performance. In our study, we take a quantitative multi-source approach. We analyse longitudinal archival data from actual actions taken during the tenure of the project execution. An analysis of cross-sectional perceptual data is then used for corroboration.