Organisation design often becomes a debate about reporting lines. Yet most performance problems live in the spaces between the boxes.
Teams wait for decisions, duplicate work or optimise their own goals at the expense of the whole. A useful operating model addresses these frictions directly. It defines how work flows, how decisions are made and how performance is managed.
Start with decisions, not structure
Identify the recurring decisions that have the greatest effect on customers, economics and pace. For each one, clarify who recommends, who decides, what evidence is required and how quickly the decision must move.
This reveals where centralisation creates leverage, where local autonomy creates speed and where cross-functional ownership is essential.
“The lived organisation is shaped as much by its rhythms and measures as by its formal structure.”
Connect the organisational system
Decision rights alone are not enough. Governance, information flows, incentives and capabilities must reinforce the same intent. When these elements point in different directions, the formal model quickly gives way to old habits.
Map value creation
Follow a customer need or commercial opportunity through the organisation and identify where momentum is lost.
Design the minimum governance
Use the fewest forums and hand-offs required to make good decisions with appropriate control.
Test before scaling
Run real decisions through the proposed model. Adjust roles and rhythms based on evidence rather than design-room assumptions.
Make the model observable
A strong operating model produces visible changes: decisions move faster, fewer issues bounce between teams and leadership spends more time on exceptions than routine coordination.
The test is not whether the organisation chart looks clean. It is whether people can get important work done with clarity and pace.