Target Operating Model
Bal Hegedus-Pickvance - Partners In Change Consulting

Target Operating Model

Are you set up to succeed?


As those who know me well know, my secret workplace passion is about helping organisations design operating models that drive efficiency, delight customers and empower people.

There are many dimensions to consider when designing a target operating model. One crucial ingredient is a positive ‘cultural’ intent i.e.? a situation where everyone involved wants the organisation to succeed, seeing change positively as a vital part of ensuring organisational success.

Where such positive cultural intent is in place, I’ve usually found that establishing the right facets of good operating model design is a joyful process. Not entirely without its challenges of course, but ultimately a process that leads to successful target operating model design.

Yet I am reminded of a specific organisation I worked with, where frustration came from, what on the surface, seemed an unlikely scenario.? I was working with a number of really great teams full of bright and collegiate people. All displayed a positive cultural intent – and yet all seemingly pulled in different and conflicting directions.

Many hours were wasted with teams falling over each en-route to potentially different goals.

When asked – they would all suggest they were enthusiastically guided by the same north star and vision.

It was an engagement, from which I learnt a huge amount about the complexities of building a target operating model. I spoke with the CEO who just could not understand why things were failing. After all, the business had a crystal clear vision that was enthusiastically embraced.

Our discussion covered much ground and was disarmingly candid.

Could blame be laid at the feet of middle management, often the first port of call when seeking to understand op model failure? Perhaps they had become stale and lazy? But my conversations and observations around the business suggested otherwise.

Almost without exception the people I met were hard working and dedicated to the overall cause. So what had gone wrong?

To solve this challenge required us to go beyond any perceived single ‘silver bullet’.

In this instance, we got to the heart of the problem by looking hard at the detail of the existing operating model, thinking beyond simple alignment around the vision and purpose, or just having the ‘right’ culture.

Instead of designing the operating model ‘top down’, we spent time at team level, establishing how (and why) teams interfaced as they did. As a result we established positive and efficient ways of working that individual teams could embrace as their own. Importantly, we incorporated the insights and realities of their day to day operation. Realities that a senior team, tasked with creating a new operating model, could never fully appreciate.

To help you on your path to designing a better operating model, PiC has pooled all of its experience to create a handy diagnostic. It is entirely free to use and can be found on the Toolbox page of this website. Toolbox - Partners In Change

It asks a series of questions to help you design an operating model with the power to make the teams in your organisation perform more efficiently. It helps avoid the common pitfall of believing there is a TOM ‘silver bullet’, instead walking you through the many facets that need to be in place for the organisation to operate most effectively.

Please take a look and feedback any views on other elements your experience suggests should come in to play

Target Operating Model - Design & Implementation - Partners In Change

Mark Fenton

Helping organisations and people to improve their performance

7 个月

Combining both top-down operating model design with obtaining an understanding of the factors that are directly affecting the teams is essential to ensuring that an operating model is successful. Impediments that prevent teams achieving their goals needs to be eliminated to remove friction and prevent 'work arounds' emerging.

Paul Johnson

COO, SiETECH UK. Identity Management, AI/ML, Privacy, Digital Transformation, Operations.

8 个月

Bal. Very good blog - you missed one important thing out - the innate ability for a great consultant to traverse all the organisational boundaries (whether real or perceived) to talk to anyone, to get insight from anyone, whatever role they are in. Many org's are aligned to the "north star" - unfortuantely the means of getting there can involve direct conflicts, or in some cases prioritising their immediate own goals and disregarding the good of the whole. You want to know the real culture of the company - talk to the PA's and others that watch & listen. Classic: Sales vs Delivery. Sales objective = sales in the short term, bigger and bigger contracts over time. Delivery objective = ensure revenue stream continues consistantly, using customer momentum and delivery to promises. North Star = company growth. All good so far, but later..... Sales don't get out of bed for small deals. Delivery consumed by large programmes, that small achievements mean little. Sales trying to sell to meet Q targets, Delivery ensuring that no oversold promises made, takes too long to scope the work, preventing working with legal so take a conservative implementation path etc. Still have the same North Star goal!! Great article though :-)

Dave Jepson

Director at Partners in Change Consulting Limited. Working with clients of all shapes and sizes to help them design and deliver change that helps to realise effective and sustained uplift in performance.

8 个月

Bal, this is really useful, and something that most organisations would benefit from - like a routine health check in real-life: we may feel okay, or we may be kidding ourselves - denying the twinge, or the presence of mild but chronic pain; we know there's something not right but we soldier on: even if there IS nothing wrong - there's value in the reassurance of having wellbeing confirmed. But often, there is something, and caught early it can be fixed: prevention is always cheaper and easier than cure. And even if there is nothing seriously wrong, we can often be helped to be even fitter. Organisations are the same. As you say, it's complex stuff, and org design has the illusion of being boxes and lines on pages, but the engineering is MUCH more complex and multi-faceted. The payback form the intervention is also generally much more highly geared than investment in systems that cost two or three orders of magnitude more, and as we all know, often disappoint in terms of realised benefit.

Nicola Mower

innovating for sustainable impact ??

8 个月

The diagnostic survey tool is a really good starting point to hone in on the most muddled or undefined aspects of the TOM, in a safe and private space, before the tough conversations begin.? Thanks for sharing this link, Bal!?

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