Evolving the Operating Model
Evolving the operating model keeps the model you built fit and improving as strategy moves, and builds your own people's ability to run that tuning themselves. We adjust the design in small, regular cycles so it stays aligned without another big reorganisation, with an optional light rhythm where we stay involved as much or as little as you want.
Evolving the operating model keeps your delivered model aligned to strategy, and we keep six things fit: we protect the parts of the design meant to stay stable and flex the parts meant to move, run small re-tuning adjustments instead of periodic reorgs, read the signals that show the design is drifting, hold the design principles and decision rights as people bend them, re-measure against your original baseline, and stand up an internal owner and review forum to run it. The model stays specific to how you work, and it keeps pace as conditions change.
This is a blend you scope with us. The core is building your own continuous-design capability - a named owner, a design-health scorecard and a review rhythm - so your people can run the tuning alone. On top of that sits an optional lighter partnership where we join the review, run the periodic re-measure and help refresh the design as strategy moves. Take the capability build and run it yourselves, keep us on a light ongoing rhythm, or both, and that balance can shift over time as your people take more on.
93% of C-suite executives say their organisation's existence is put at risk by operating models that cannot keep pace with change. Evolving the model keeps it in step so it does not become that risk (Accenture, 'The Resilient Business Operating Model', 2021).
When this helps
Clients engage this stage once the new operating model is live and they want it to stay fit. These are the situations we are most often asked into. If one sounds like yours, this is a good place to start.
The situation | How it helps |
|---|---|
You have delivered the new model and want it to last | Sets a light tuning rhythm and the signals to watch, so the model keeps working long after the rollout rather than settling and slipping |
A past restructure faded once attention moved on | Puts a named owner and a standing review in place, so drift gets caught and corrected instead of quietly building back up |
You want to own and run the tuning in-house | Builds the capability into your people - the owner, the forum, the scorecard and the loops - so you make structural adjustments without calling in a consultant each time |
You want a critical friend on hand, not a big programme | Keeps us involved at a cadence you choose, joining the review and running the deeper re-measure, with no heavy retainer and no obligation to keep us |
Strategy is shifting and the model needs to flex | Re-tunes the design in small cycles as conditions move, so it keeps pace with where you are heading rather than falling behind it |
You inherited a delivered model that is quietly decaying | Reads where it has drifted from its original intent and restores fitness through small adjustments, without a fresh full redesign |
What keeping it fit involves
We keep six parts of the operating model fit, leading with the move that keeps it in step without another reorg:
- Protect the backbone, flex the edge - We keep clear which parts of the design are meant to stay stable - core decision rights, principles, the accountability structure - and which are meant to move, so you adjust the flexible elements while the load-bearing structure holds.
- Re-tune, don't re-org - We run small, frequent structural adjustments as a standing loop - a span here, a role interface there, a clarified decision right - so the model keeps pace with strategy without another disruptive redesign.
- Read the design's drift signals - We set the leading indicators that show a model is starting to slip - spans and layers creeping, decision rights blurring, hand-offs multiplying, accountability gaps opening - and teach your people to spot them early, so you adjust before the structure stops working.
- Hold the design intent - We keep your design principles, decision rights and operating-model rules explicit and defended as people naturally bend them, so the logic you paid to build stays intact.
- Re-measure against the design baseline - On a set cadence we check the model against the original diagnostic's metrics to see if it is holding and to catch drift early - a light recalibration against your baseline, not a fresh full assessment.
- A design owner and a review forum - We stand up a named internal owner and a small design-review community of practice, hand over the scorecard and the method, and coach them until they run the tuning rhythm without us.
Why these six
These six are what keeps a delivered operating model fit rather than letting it settle back toward the shape you replaced. The first two carry the distinctive move: protect the parts meant to stay fixed, and adjust the parts meant to flex in small cycles, so the model stays aligned to strategy without the cost and disruption of another full reorganisation. The next two make that possible in practice - you can only tune what you can see drifting, and only defend a design whose principles stay explicit as people bend them.
The last two are the plumbing every sustained model needs: a light re-measure against the baseline the diagnostic set, and a named owner with a forum to run it. They follow the continuous-design frameworks, so the work covers what keeping a design alive really takes - the signals, the small adjustments, the stable core and the person accountable for watching it - rather than a periodic health-check bolted on afterwards.
How it works
The method keeps the operating model fit and puts the running of it in your hands. It works by building the capability into your people and setting a light rhythm they can run, with us stepping back to whatever level you choose. It works in four modes.
- We scope how much you hold and how much we hold - We agree the blend up front - the capability build is the core, the ongoing rhythm is optional, and you decide the balance. Take it all in-house and run solo, keep us on a light cadence, or both, and shift that balance over time as your people take more on.
- We build the capability into your people - We stand up the named design owner and the review forum, hand over the design-health scorecard and the method, and coach them until they read the drift signals, hold the design principles and run the re-tuning loops themselves.
- We set a light rhythm you run - We put a standing review cadence in place where your owner checks the scorecard against the stage-one baseline, logs drift and agrees the small adjustments, with a lighter between-review loop for quick structural fixes.
- We step back, and stay reachable at the cadence you set - Once your people are running it, we hand it over fully and remain available at whatever level you want - joining the review, running the deeper re-measure, or simply on hand when you need a second opinion. Never a heavy retainer, and never an obligation to keep us.
The thinking behind the method
Operating models decay by default, not by accident. People bend decision rights back toward the familiar, layers creep in, hand-offs multiply, and the design you paid to build slips a little each quarter until it stops delivering. The usual answer is to wait until it is bad enough to justify another reorganisation, which is expensive, disruptive and often fails to stick. Small, frequent re-tuning avoids that cycle by correcting drift while it is still small.
That only works if someone inside the organisation is watching and accountable, which is why the capability build is the core rather than an add-on. We make your own people able to read the signals and make the adjustments, so the design stays fit without a consultant on every move. The optional rhythm keeps us close enough to run the deeper re-measure and refresh the principles as strategy moves, but the ownership stays with you.
What you get
From this stage you come away with four things:
- A model that stays fit and keeps improving - the operating model you delivered stays aligned to strategy and gets tuned as conditions change, so the redesign investment compounds instead of decaying toward the next big reorg.
- Your own people owning and running it - a named design owner and a review forum who read the drift signals, hold the design principles and make the structural adjustments themselves.
- A light rhythm and the loops in place - a design-health scorecard, a standing review cadence and the between-review self-tuning loop, all running against the baseline your diagnostic set.
- The option of us on call - a critical friend at the cadence you choose, from joining every review to a periodic re-measure, scoped to what you want and nothing more.
Owned by your people, supported by us - as much or as little as you need, and that balance is yours to shift over time.
When we step back - and staying on call
This is the final stage of the arc, so it closes the loop rather than handing on to another programme. We build the capability into your people, hand over the scorecard and the method, and step back so the continuous-design rhythm runs in-house. From there you decide how present we stay - on hand for every review, running the periodic re-measure, or simply reachable when you want a second opinion. There is no retainer to keep and no obligation to keep us.
Sometimes the world moves far enough that small tuning is not enough and the model needs a bigger reset. When the re-measure shows that, the loop points back to the diagnostic, and the four-stage cycle begins again from a clear read of the new situation. Most of the time it does not come to that, because catching drift early is what keeps the reset years away rather than months.
Where this sits
Evolving the operating model is the final stage in how we approach organisational design. It re-measures against the baseline set by the Organisational Design Diagnostic, and it sustains and tunes the model delivered by the Operating Model Rollout. It keeps the whole four-stage investment fit and improving over years, and when a bigger reset is needed it loops back to re-diagnose and start the cycle again. It also stands on its own - if you have a delivered or inherited model that is quietly decaying, you can bring it here to restore its fitness without going back to the start.
Common questions
How is this different from the Organisational Design Diagnostic?
The diagnostic assesses your organisation from scratch and sets a baseline of what is working and what is getting in the way. This stage re-measures against that baseline on a cadence to catch drift early - a light recalibration, not a fresh full assessment. It re-measures rather than re-assesses. When the re-measure shows the gap is too big to tune, that is the point you would go back to the diagnostic.
How is this different from the Operating Model Rollout?
The rollout delivered the change as a programme, putting the new model into how the organisation runs day to day. This stage sustains and evolves that delivered model with small, standing adjustments, so it stays fit as strategy moves. The rollout builds the model; this keeps it working. It is the lightest-touch and longest-running stage, and it never re-sells a delivery programme or another reorg.
Do we have to keep you on retainer?
No. The core of this stage is building your own continuous-design capability, so you can take it and run the tuning yourselves. The ongoing rhythm where we stay involved is optional and scoped with you - from joining every review to an occasional re-measure - and you can dial it down or drop it entirely as your people take more on. There is no heavy retainer and no obligation to keep us.
What will our own people be able to do?
Your named design owner and review forum will read the drift signals, hold the design principles and decision rights, run the re-tuning loops, and re-measure the model against its baseline. In practice that means making the structural adjustments themselves - a span, a role interface, a clarified decision right - without calling in a consultant for every move. You leave with a standing in-house continuous-design capability, not a dependence on us.
Isn't this just re-running the audit every year?
No. An annual audit is a periodic assessment that produces a report; this is a standing rhythm your own people run to catch drift and make small adjustments as they go. The re-measure against the baseline is one light part of it, not the whole. The point is to tune the model continuously so it never drifts far enough to need a full re-audit and reorg.
How much of this can we run ourselves?
All of it, if you want. The capability build stands up the owner, the scorecard, the forum and the loops so your people can run the whole continuous-design rhythm alone. Most clients keep us on a light cadence at the start and take more on as their capability grows. You choose the split, and it is yours to change over time.
Ready to keep your operating model fit?
Tell us about the model you have in place and what you want it to keep doing, and we will talk through what evolving it would look like for you - how much your people run, how much we stay involved, and where the balance starts. If a delivered or inherited model is already drifting, we can focus on restoring its fitness first.