Operating Model
What R20bn in Transformation Taught Me About Operating Models
The single most consistent finding across 25 years and more than R20 billion in transformation outcomes is this: organisations redesign their org chart and call it an operating model. They are not the same thing, and the confusion between them costs billions.
An org chart describes hierarchy — who reports to whom. An operating model describes how value actually flows — where decisions are made, how work moves between teams, and what happens when it gets stuck. You can have a perfect org chart sitting on top of a completely dysfunctional operating model, and most large organisations do.
The Five Components of a Real Operating Model
Decision rights — who can make what decision, at what value, without escalating. This is the most neglected component and the most consequential.
Work flow architecture — how work physically moves from initiation to delivery, and where it habitually stalls.
Accountability distribution — not who is responsible on paper, but who loses something personally when an outcome is missed.
Information flows — who sees what, when, and whether that information reaches them in time to act on it.
Capability location — where in the organisation the skills required to deliver actually sit, and whether they are accessible to the teams that need them.
Why the TOM Must Be Designed Before the Structure
The conventional approach is to redesign the organisational structure first — new teams, new reporting lines, new titles — and then assume the operating model will follow. It does not. Structure without operating model produces reorganisation without transformation. People move desks. Work continues to flow through the same informal channels it always did, because those channels exist for structural reasons that the org chart did not address.
Design the operating model first. Then design the structure that enables it. The sequence matters more than most organisations realise, and getting it backwards is one of the most expensive mistakes in enterprise transformation.