Operating Model
When the structure works against the strategy.
Your strategy is set and your people are capable. The organisation they're working in was built to deliver something else. That shows up as slow decisions, work stalling between functions, and three teams needed for something one should own.
It looks like a performance problem. It's a design problem.
What an operating model actually is
Design, or delivery?
When this is the work
- The strategy changed. The structure didn't.
- Nothing gets decided without three teams in the room, and none of them owns it.
- Since the restructure there are two ways of working running in parallel, and everyone knows which one is real.
- Work slows every time it crosses a function, and nobody can point to where.
- What worked at fifty people is quietly failing at five hundred.
- Your best people have stopped raising it, which is usually the last signal before they leave.
Start with the target operating model
A target operating model is what the organisation has to look like to deliver what it has already promised. Not the chart. The whole system: how work flows, who is organised to do it, who decides, what information and technology carry it, and how you know it's working.
Six dimensions, and they move together.
Change the structure without changing who decides and you have a new chart with the old delays. That is why the design starts with the model rather than with any one piece of it.
It is not a business model review. A business model is what value you create and how you make money. An operating model is how you are put together to deliver it. I assess all six dimensions against one question: can this organisation deliver what it has already committed to? That is an execution question. I am not asking whether you are in the right markets. I am asking whether the way you are built lets you do what you have already decided.
Where the design work usually lands
In most organisations the constraint concentrates in the same three, and they are the three most often skipped, because they are less visible than a restructure and less fundable than a platform.
Organisational design
Structure, layers, spans and where capability actually sits. Start at the chart and you move boxes. Start at the work and you find out why three teams are needed for one decision.
Accountabilities & decision making
Escalation isn't a culture problem. It's what people do when they aren't certain they're allowed to decide. Naming who owns what, and who decides at which level, is the straightforward part. Holding it the first time someone tests it is where it's won or lost.
Ways of working
Most delay isn't in the doing. It's in the waiting, the handoffs and the rework between functions. Agile where pace is the constraint, human-centred design where the work has drifted from what the customer actually needs. The method follows the problem.
Why you might start with design. Restructuring is the most visible lever a leadership team has, which is why it gets pulled before the cheaper ones. It will not make slow decisions fast and it will not fix work that stalls between functions. It is the right place to start when the shape itself is wrong: the strategy changed and the structure didn't, you have outgrown the design you built at your last size, or capability sits in five places when it should sit in one.
Why structure quietly beats effort
Those rules were put there to reduce uncertainty. The rule was never the problem. The habit that grew around it was.
Assessing your target operating model
The six dimensions are what an operating model is made of. The seven conditions of the Strategy Execution Maturity Model are what I look for inside them.
A design problem shows up in three of the seven. Governance and Accountability, when a decision has no owner. Execution Feasibility, when the design is asking for something the organisation isn't built to do. And Culture for Execution, because working around a bad design becomes a habit long before it becomes a complaint.
When an operating model isn't the answer
If the strategy itself isn't clear, structure won't rescue it. Redesigning around an unclear strategy gives you a tidier version of the same confusion, at considerable cost and disruption.
And if the design is sound but nothing is landing, the problem is delivery, not structure. Start with Strategic Planning or Execution instead, or take the assessment and find out which it is.
Operating Model FAQs
What is a target operating model?
A target operating model is what an organisation has to look like in future to deliver its strategy. It typically covers six dimensions: work and process, organisation and capability, decision making and governance, ways of working, information and technology, and performance and measures.
It is a design, not a chart. Most of the value is in the arguments it forces you to have, because the disagreements it surfaces were already there and already slowing you down.
What's the difference between an operating model and an organisational structure?
A structure shows who reports to whom. An operating model shows how the work actually gets done: who decides, what moves between teams, where capability sits, and what it costs to move work across the organisation.
Restructures fail when the chart changes and nothing else does. That is why moving the boxes so often produces a new diagram and the same delays.
What's the difference between an operating model and a business model?
A business model is what value you create and how you make money. An operating model is how the organisation is put together to deliver it.
You can have a sound business model and still be unable to execute it, and that is far more common than the reverse. The question an operating model answers is not whether you are in the right markets. It is whether the way you are built lets you do what you have already decided.
What's the difference between operating model work and execution work?
An operating model is how you're built. Execution is how you move.
Operating model work changes the standing design of the organisation, so every future initiative runs differently. Execution work builds the machinery that carries one strategy through: portfolio governance, the EPMO, change management and benefits. Most organisations arrive convinced they need the second and find the first is the constraint.
How do I know whether the problem is the structure or the strategy?
From the inside, usually you can't. Both present the same way: slow decisions, work that stalls between teams, and initiatives that never quite land.
The Strategy Execution Maturity Model separates them by scoring seven conditions independently, so a clarity problem and a design problem show up in different places. It takes five minutes, which is considerably less than the quarter most executive teams spend arguing about it.
How long does operating model design take?
Designing it usually takes eight to sixteen weeks, depending on how much of the model is in scope. Living in it takes far longer, because you are changing habits as well as boxes.
The old model keeps reasserting itself until the new decision rights are real, and people will test whether they are. That first test is the one that decides whether the design holds.
Do you work outside Brisbane?
Yes. I work with boards and executive teams across Australia and New Zealand, on site where the work needs it and remotely where it doesn't.
Work in the operating model space usually needs time in the room early, because the disagreements that matter don't surface on a video call. After that, most of it runs remotely without losing anything.
Not sure if the design is the problem?
The snapshot assessment scores your organisation across all seven conditions. Five minutes won't tell you everything. It will tell you where to start looking.