Why your Target Operating Model should never really be finished

41 minutes ago

3 min read

By Gareth Greppellini

An acquisition or transformation programme can reshape a business overnight. AI and automation redefine capability needs. Cost bases shift, customer expectations evolve, and executive leadership adjusts the strategy.

None of this means your original operating model design was wrong. It simply means it was designed for a version of your organisation that no longer exists. Over time, this creates a dangerous strategy execution gap between boardroom ambition and daily operational reality.

A very real challenge for businesses today is building the muscle to keep execution aligned and delivering as your strategy moves.

Go-live is where real diagnosis begins

There is always a gap between an operating model drawn in a deck and one lived in the real world. A design might promise faster decisions and clearer decision rights, but daily operations are the only real test:

· Are strategic decisions happening faster, or are teams stuck in indecision?

· Has capacity been freed up, or are your experts still bogged down in coordination and firefighting?

· Are senior leaders spending less time managing internal friction and more time driving growth?

· Are cross-functional hand-offs cleaner, or have new workarounds emerged?

Delivery shouldn’t be where measurement ends. It’s where valuable diagnostic data begins. It gives you the cold, hard evidence to see whether your setup is delivering commercial value - and where to adjust when it isn't.

When the strategy moves, so should the operating model

Businesses rarely evolve in neat, predictable cycles. A new enterprise tool lands here; a team expands rapidly there, or a shifted product offering changes how work flows across functions.

Individually, these tweaks seem manageable. Collectively, they pull your operating model away from its intended design, creating hidden friction that slows down execution velocity and leaks value.

Waiting three to five years for another multi-million-pound TOM overhaul isn't the answer. A far more practical approach is establishing a regular operational rhythm: prune the rose bushes continuously rather than waiting for the garden to overgrow. Evaluate how the model is performing, pinpoint where the business has shifted, and make targeted adjustments before minor friction becomes a major execution bottleneck.

That turns your operating model from a static blueprint into a dynamic driver of strategy execution.

Capability over dependency

Continuous evolution should never mean embedding permanent management consultants inside your business.

External expertise is valuable during major strategic shifts, but it shouldn't become something your leadership team depends on for daily execution. The goal must be internal capability - equipping your own leaders with the metrics, governance, and tools to evaluate and adapt your operating model independently.

This philosophy sits at the heart of smart/tasking’s smart/TOM (Target Operating Model as a Service).

Rather than treating diagnosis, design, and execution as disconnected, one-off projects, smart/TOM brings them together into continuous, agile execution sprints. We help you measure performance, execute high-impact adjustments, and build internal capability. So, our role systematically scales back as your organisation grows stronger.

Never finished, always aligned

The ultimate goal is operational discipline: making small, evidence-based adjustments as you go so massive, disruptive overhauls become completely unnecessary.

The core question for senior leadership shifts from:

“Do we have the right Target Operating Model today?”

to:

“Have we built an organisation capable of keeping execution aligned when our strategy moves tomorrow?”

Continue the conversation

On 15 October, we are bringing together a small group of senior leaders for a private smart/tasking Executive Breakfast Briefing in London. We’ll be exploring whether your Target Operating Model is genuinely fit for the business you’re becoming - and what to do if it’s not.

Register your interest here: Your strategy moved, has your operating model?