Operating Model Development: Turning Strategy into Everyday Action
The strategy has been documented and goals have been set. Yet everyday work continues as before, decisions are delayed, and development efforts are pushed aside by daily urgencies. The reason is rarely the strategy itself or the people. More often, the organization’s operating model has not evolved alongside the new strategy.
So what is the goal of operating model development? Three things:
- Faster and clearer decision-making
- Less waiting, duplication, and unnecessary work
- The ability to adapt and renew with minimal disruption to business operations
Ultimately, these factors are reflected in lead times, profitability, and customer experience. That is why we do not bring a one-size-fits-all framework off the shelf. We design an operating model that fits your situation together with the people whose work it affects.
What Operating Model Development Means
An operating model defines how an organization functions in practice: how work flows, who makes decisions and owns responsibilities, how leadership is exercised, and how value is delivered to customers. Developing the operating model means changing the way the organization works so that it can achieve its goals more effectively.
It always involves multiple dimensions simultaneously:
- Structures and roles. How the organization, teams, and responsibilities are organized, and who owns the bigger picture.
- Processes and decision-making. How work moves through the organization, who decides what, and based on which information.
- Leadership and culture. How objectives are managed, how managers lead, and whether people feel safe speaking up when something is not working.
- Capabilities and collaboration. What people need to know to succeed in the new way of working and how teams collaborate across boundaries.
- Technology and tools. Which systems support work and which ones slow it down.
When one of these elements changes, others often need to change as well. This is why technology initiatives rarely succeed without corresponding changes in ways of working. Organizational development should be approached as a whole.
Common Challenges
These are issues we encounter in nearly every organization. They are also the most common reasons why operating model development becomes a priority. Challenges are rarely confined to a single organizational level.
Executive Team and Leadership
- Strategy does not guide everyday work. Objectives have been defined but are not reflected in weekly priorities or in decisions about what should no longer be done. Management by objectives remains incomplete.
- Decision-making is slow and responsibilities are unclear. Issues pass unnecessarily through the executive team because ownership and decision rights are not clearly defined.
- Growth has outpaced the operating model. Ways of working that were effective in a company of thirty people often no longer work in an organization of one hundred. The operating model has evolved unintentionally rather than by design.
Across the Organization
- Shared operating principles are missing. Following acquisitions or organizational restructuring, different units continue to work in different ways.
- More must be achieved with fewer resources. Profitability pressures require waste reduction and process optimization, not simply the introduction of another framework.
- The new model remains a document. The operating model has been designed separately from everyday work, implementation drags on, and resistance to change emerges unexpectedly.
Teams and Frontline Management
- Work gets stuck between teams. Individual teams perform well, but work slows down at handoffs and interfaces. Dependencies are not managed effectively, and business and development teams speak different languages.
- Managers are left alone in the change. The new operating model is decided at the top, but managers are expected to explain it and resolve day-to-day challenges without sufficient support.
- Critical knowledge is concentrated in key individuals. When expertise resides with only one person, vacations or departures can bring work to a halt.
How We Approach Development
The traditional approach is to design an ideal target model first and then implement it. However, extensive planning takes time, reality rarely follows the plan exactly, and in the worst case the model is outdated before it is launched. For this reason, we emphasize practical experimentation. New ways of working are tested in real environments, such as pilot teams, and feedback is gathered directly from those doing the work. We believe sufficient planning provides direction, but excessive planning before action creates waste and slows learning. The best results come from a balanced combination of both.
There is also a strong business rationale for this approach. Every change temporarily reduces efficiency because old habits no longer support the work while new ones have not yet become routine. This productivity dip cannot be completely avoided, but its impact can be managed. A large-scale, one-time transition concentrates the disruption into a shorter but steeper period. Incremental change keeps the dip smaller but extends the transition period. If the transition takes too long, people can become fatigued by constant change. Neither approach is automatically right. The best choice depends on how tightly connected the different elements of the operating model are, how much time pressure exists, and how much change the organization can absorb at once. We make this decision together, supported by experience gained across numerous organizations.
Successful experimentation also requires feedback to flow freely throughout the organization. Without psychological safety, people are unlikely to speak openly about where a new model is not working. That is why we use a coaching approach and create mechanisms that surface issues early enough to address them.
How We Can Help
Our services cover the entire journey, from understanding the current state to embedding new ways of working:
- Operating model assessment. Interviews, observations, and data analysis provide a clear picture of where work slows down and decision-making breaks down.
- Executive team and leadership model development. Creating a shared direction, clear accountability, management by objectives, and leadership rhythms that support strategy execution.
- Operating model design and piloting. Developing structures, roles, and processes together with key stakeholders and validating them through pilots before wider rollout.
- Team development and team coaching. Establishing clear roles, shared ways of working, effective cross-team collaboration, and psychological safety.
- Manager coaching. Supporting those who lead change in everyday work through difficult conversations, coaching leadership practices, and team support during transitions.
- Organizational culture development. Building accountability, transparency, and an experimentation mindset that also embraces learning from failures.
- Change management and adoption. Facilitating co-design, communication, performance metrics, and, when needed, interim support as part of your team.
What Changes as a Result:
- Decision-making becomes faster and responsibilities become clear because they have been jointly defined and tested in practice.
- The new operating model has been validated in real work before broader implementation, reducing uncertainty during rollout.
- The productivity dip associated with change is smaller and shorter because the pace of transformation is aligned with the organization’s change capacity.
- Managers and teams receive support when change becomes challenging in day-to-day work.
- Knowledge and capabilities are transferred to your people throughout the journey, ensuring the new way of working does not depend on external consultants.