Treat Your Business Operating Model as an Evolving Lego?

The original of this article was published in June 6, 2018.

Businesses across industries need to deal with a constant flow of risks and opportunities and the way they anticipate and deal with them will determine their success or failure. While this is important for any leader, it is more so for those having holistic views of the business and capable of influencing them such as CEOs, COOs, CIOs, CHROs, Transformation heads and so forth.?

These leaders need to treat their business operating model (BOM) as if it was an on-going Lego? game keeping it always visible and available for improvements and maintenance. To do so, they need to prepare and equip themselves with the necessary knowledge, disciplines, and tools to maintain a clear understanding of its multiple components aiming to weather those risks and capitalize on the opportunities in a systematic manner by constantly scraping obsolete components, adjusting those that need to evolve, or adding new shapes and forms if needed.

These Lego? building blocks constantly define, update, and improve components showing?why?the business exists,?whathappens within the business,?and?how it is to be executed.

These are few practices that today’s leaders need to enable:

The Risks and Opportunities

Risks and Opportunities come from external and internal sources.?External?factors include such sources as customers, competitors, and regulatory agencies. As for?internal?factors may include products and services, culture, structure, processes, and technology, among others.?

All of these factors may represent risks and opportunities and the components of a BOM should aim to provide the capabilities to anticipate what may be coming and prepare for transition, then execute to mitigate the risk or capitalize the opportunity, and when possible reap the benefits.?

Failure to understand and be able to evolve components of the BOM does generate missing risks and opportunities, changes in BOM components happening under our noses, or diminished and nullified capabilities to redefine or transform.

Chart the Complete Blueprint

Depending on the industry or the framework being followed to manage the BOM, there are multiple components, attributes or dimensions to it. Like a complex Lego? structure, the existing blueprint needs to be mapped to clearly understand the different components and variables (building blocks) at play.?

Leaders need to start blueprinting the current state with a clear understanding of the recent past. Once mapped and understood, it becomes easier to identify the forces at play in way of risks and opportunities, as well as the existing and required capabilities required to mitigate or capitalize.?

Get Familiar?and Keep It Handy

Just as one familiarizes with a Lego? structure that is build on a workbench, the BOM structure should be familiar for most leaders across an organization by keeping it visible and part of daily conversations.?

Having familiarity with this BOM will naturally link business capabilities against business objectives naturally identifying gaps that need to be addresses.?

Define your Approach for Change

To simplify, there are two models for change in an ongoing business.?

One of them is major transformation including M&A, downsizing operations, or performing major technological upgrades. They represent the highest disruption for the business. Because it also represents thew highest risk, many cases present significant problems or just fail miserably.

The second model is a constant flow of change and adjustment in all the BOM components. This means continuous revisions on?why?the business exists,?what?happens within the business,?and?how operation is conducted, adjusting, and if needed pivoting, the strategy, the capabilities, and the change efforts.?

From a business perspective this approach results in a constant confirmation and revision of the business imperatives, and from a change perspective this means a constant flow of low risk and manageable change.

In closing, when leaders are given visibility to a holistic blueprint of their BOM and empowered to steer the different components, a business will be well on its way to anticipate internal and external risks and opportunities mitigating or capitalizing on them??

Guillermo Pedro Gonzalez

Global Transformation Executive specializing in ?? IT Strategy ?? Operational & Business Strategy ?? Partnership Development ?? Process Improvement ?? PMO Leadership

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