Operating Model Health Check · 10 min · free
Where does your operating model honestly stand?
Most businesses do not have a bad structure. They have one built for a business a fraction of the size, or sometimes twice the size. Ten minutes shows which parts were designed and which were inherited.
Start the check now →No email before your result · no sales call after
- LaggingTen or more people report to the CEO, and tenders, hires and anything over a few thousand dollars still wait for the CEO's signature.
- BasicFewer people report to the CEO than once did, but most decisions still route through the CEO's office.
- CompetentFive to eight people report to the CEO, or in a group each division head holds a full profit number, and each of them runs something with a result they are held to.
- AdvancedThe CEO's week is mostly direction and people rather than sorting out problems, and the shape of the top table was chosen against the strategy, not inherited.
- LeadingThe CEO could be away for a month without a decision waiting for them to come back.
What the check covers
Twenty-five to thirty practices across five dimensions, one screen each. Pick the sentence that is true today.
Fit to strategy and the role of the centre
Whether the shape of the business was chosen, what head office is for, and whether the model still fits the size.
Structure, roles and layers
How many people report to the CEO, how many layers a decision passes through, and who below the CEO owns a margin.
Decisions and governance
Who decides what, how far down it can be decided, and whether the standing meetings decide anything.
Capabilities, sourcing and cross-functional processes
Whether a capability gap is fixed with capability or with another restructure, and what is made, shared or bought.
Money, metrics and ways of working
Whether each unit is measured on what it controls, and whether people and money can move without a restructure.
Ask your leadership team too. Set up a team poll: each colleague answers alone, and you see where your views differ.
Sample report · your profile
What you get
Your profile
Stage names across every area.
Two or three moves
Each one step right, with what good looks like.
A one-page PDF
Written to put in front of your board, leadership or team.
Four questions
How long does it take?
About ten minutes. One dimension per screen, and you can stop and come back.
Who sees my answers?
You. In a team poll with individual answers visible, the person who set it up also sees each answer against level and function, never a name. Only anonymised figures go into benchmarks. A comparison appears only once enough similar businesses have taken the check.
Is this advice?
No. It is a self-assessment against practices built from more than 30 years of strategy consulting and over 1,000 engagements. What you do with it is yours.
What happens after?
Your report opens on screen as soon as you finish, with no email asked for. If you want a copy, there is a field on the report to send yourself the link, once. Nobody calls. If you want to talk, there is a button on your report; nobody will contact you otherwise. No email before your result, no sales call after it, no list, and delete on request.
More about this check
Most businesses do not have a bad structure. They have a structure built for a business a fraction of the size. Nobody rebuilt its decision rights, forums and scorecards when the boxes moved. In other cases, a business has divested a major business unit, but still carries the old corporate overhead and structures. The cost can be invisible because it arrives as delay. Decisions wait for a meeting, overheads grow as fast as sales, and a CEO still signs everything. Or the cost becomes the headline, a corporate centre far too large for the new size of the business after the divestment. The standing warning in our experience is that redrawing the chart is the wrong first lever. Decision rights, measures and capability come first, and the boxes move last.
What the check covers
Sentences you can check:
Each of these is the lowest of five sentences on its question, from how the practice goes wrong to how it goes well. If one of them is true of your business, the check says so. Then it shows you the next sentence up: what one step better looks like.
What you get
Your profile across the five dimensions in stage names, not scores. The pattern you match, if you match one. The two or three moves that take you one step right, each with what good looks like. A one-page version written to be put in front of your board, your leadership or your team.
What it is worth is a fair question. In one business we have seen (a government-owned aviation business of about 4,500 people), nine operating divisions became six. About 8 to 10 per cent of its total cost base was banked in the first ten months. The diagnostic had sized 13 to 17 per cent over eighteen months, and deliberately excluded any saving from the frontline workforce. That is one business, it is an outcome we have seen, and it is not a forecast for yours.
Spans and layers are one common methodology here. However, they are not a prescription. The right span depends on the work, and the object is the number of layers a decision passes through.
Start the check
One check, for a single business or a group of them. Two questions come first: whether you are answering for one business or a multi-business group, and roughly how big it is. Answer for the business you run; a group answers for the group and treats its businesses as the units. The same business run in several countries or under several brands is one business.
If you want to see your own spans and layers before you start, the spans-and-layers calculator is on the tools page. Nothing you type there leaves the page.
Ten minutes. Private. Your report on screen.
Two minutes first? Try the five-question version.
See how often cost-cutting programmes hit their target, from listed companies' own reports.