“If you build pyramids, you get ‘mummies’’’
Are you still in control?
Businesses have a very dual relationship with ‘structure’.
That is not surprising: a business, in the end, is a social construction with economic objectives. And that is where organisations need to balance ‘connection’ with ‘autonomy’, ‘freedom’ with ‘framework and structure’.
Are you busy or in business?
The operating model is the linking pin between the strategy and the company must-win-battles, and the people, competencies and other resources in an organisation. Show me your operating model, and I will tell you what strategy you have!
The operating model channels and streamlines the activities and resources, on the one hand, and behaviours and energy of individuals, on the other hand.
What agility do you need to get there?
What combination of focus, flexibility and speed does your organisation, business unit, department or team need? To deliver on its purpose, your operating model needs to be more than the organisation chart:
- it is on the one hand about the logical/structuring part – the ‘hard side’ - of our organisation:
- the reporting lines, information flow, meeting cadence
- the decision making structures and governance
- accountability/KPI’s, the roles and responsibilities
- key process and policies (including culture and focus setting processes such as budgeting, reviews, performance management)
- and it is about the behavioural/human part – the ‘soft side’ of our organisation:
- the values
- the behaviours, delegation and empowerment
- the skills and competencies needed in different parts of the organisation
- the key teams for performance and their readiness to deliver
- the key relationships, feedback and learning loops
- learning and development activities
- and it is about the consistency of these all.
How do you balance to fly?
Your operating model needs to balance clarity and alignment, with commitment and ‘esprit’/climate. No operating model handbook can describe in all circumstances and in full detail who is supposed to do what, how, when and where. Within the framework of the operating model, people need to feel and take the space to (inter)act and get things done.
Creating space for growth
High performance and learning happens when people take ownership on the one hand, and feel safe on the other hand. That is the key contribution of an operating model: it creates the space, for people to do what is called for. So, the operating model work is about supporting ‘living in the territory’, not just and not in the first place about ‘following the instructions on the map’.
Improving from today + transforming for tomorrow!
Operating model is about how we move and grow to our future state and position. Too often adaptations in the organisation structure are first and foremost corrections of the flaws and gaps in the way we did things last year. That is why some organisations get into a (long) sequence of reorganisations, as they keep on fixing yesterday’s problems and fail to move (fast) to tomorrow’s ambition and objectives. At the same time, we need to accept that as we grow and learn, we might need to evolve our operating model: that is why it is called organisation development.