Operating Model? What's That?

Answering that question is key to creating a more efficient organization.

SPRCHRGR is delighted to share this highly informative article from guest author Belle Walker of Belleview Consulting.

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It took me a while pin down the right name for my favorite kind of project. But since landing on "operating model" a few years ago, I've used that term fairly consistently. It works great when talking to people already familiar with the concept. Unfortunately, for many of the small-business owners and leaders I work with, this is an entirely new expression. So I decided it was time to write my own version of the "What Is an Operating Model?" article.

Obviously, the "operating model" concept predates Belleview Consulting. The job-search website Indeed has a pretty solid write-up about operating models for anyone curious to see how the term is used more broadly. My goal, however, is to take advantage of the phrase's relative obscurity to zero in on what Belleview creates for our clients.

At its heart, an operating model is the minimum set of information a company should define so that all employees can easily understand:

• Role expectations: Areas of ownership and degree of strategic or tactical thinking for themselves and their colleagues

• Contributions context: How each person's and/or team's work supports the overall organization and its goals

• Collaboration touchpoints: Refers to meetings and "who needs to talk to who when" to connect the pillars of a company and balance our natural tendency to form silos

If you want to skip ahead, the one-sentence summary of an operating model is down in the second-to-last paragraph. To fully understand that sentence, however, you should first walk through the process of creating an operating model.

It starts with an org chart. Sort of. For a while, I considered calling these projects "org chart plus" engagements because that's a fairly accurate description of what I guide my clients through creating. And while an org chart is a familiar concept to many business leaders, I'm careful to remind clients that an org chart alone rarely provides enough information for anyone in the organization to truly understand how to do their job.

In fact, as I've talked about in a previous article, my clients and I often start by defining the org chart of the future. This ensures that whatever we design to support today's operations has a clear evolutionary path to an organizational structure that can meet the company's needs five or even 10 years into the future. Then we create the short-term or "initial" org chart. That's when the real fun begins.

Once we have a rough outline of the near- and long-term org charts, we look at the titles that have been bandied about. Often there are titles like "manager" or "director" or "C.O." Usually the leader or team I'm working with has some ideas about what those words imply but has yet to put those ideas into words. That's why I like to tackle these definitions with the words first, but I also try to add a few visuals that summarize the concepts. This helps to confirm everyone has the same understanding of the concepts while also supporting more visual learners in adopting the new model.

Rounding out the leveling framework offers a great opportunity to go back to the org chart and make sure what we've designed is consistent with the definitions now in place. Usually, some tweaking is needed. I take that as a good sign.

Next we look at collaboration. Whether introducing middle managers for the first time or simply rethinking the existing framework, humans have a tendency to align themselves with their team — which, in a professional context, often means the people who are part of their reporting chain. To balance this tendency, we must ensure employees are coordinating across team boundaries. A great approach is to define a minimum set of meetings with clearly articulated purposes and attendees lists. (The mechanical engineer in me likes to think of this step as "cross-bracing" the organization.)

Last, but certainly not least, comes more iteration across the org chart and the leveling framework. By cycling through these elements several times to check for consistency, we can zero in on an approach that reflects the organization's vision while actually supporting day-to-day operations. The end result looks a bit different for each company, but to me that's simply part of the beauty.

So what is a Belleview-supported operating model? It's an org chart, leveling framework and collaboration model with sufficient detail in the documentation to enable team members to know how work gets done. That way, everyone can focus on the actual doing.

To get a better idea of how these principles work in practice, check out Belleview Consulting's library of operating model case studies or contact them here.