Target Operating Model Redesign

A redesign is only as sound as the picture of how work really flows, and the hand-offs and workarounds that carry the business are what the org chart leaves out.

For consultancies running operating-model and restructuring work: hear from every employee, uncover how work actually flows across the org, and redesign the model around the reality beneath the chart.

The question your clients are asking

How do we need to be set up
to deliver our strategy?

Where it breaks

The operating model
cannot be redrawn
from the org chart.

01

The model on paper rarely matches how work actually happens on the ground.

02

The people who live those workflows every day are never asked how the work really runs.

Leaders can describe the structure they intend, but not the hand-offs, workarounds, and cross-team paths work really takes. That lives in the daily work below them. The interviews reveal the real operating model, so the redesign is built on reality.

WORKFLOWS LOOK CLEAN FROM ABOVE
The designed model
How work really runs
And this is what you hear

The chart shows who reports to whom. The interviews show how the work actually moves.

The interviews go deeper than any chart can. People describe how the work really runs in their own words, and the interviewer follows up on every answer, digging into the why and the how. This gives you a real picture of the operating model to redesign from.

How does the work really flow?

The hand-offs and paths the chart never shows.

"The official process? Nobody actually uses it." "I just message Maria directly, it's faster." "We built our own spreadsheet to bridge the gap." "Two teams both think they own this."

You can tell the client where work really flows, who the real hubs are, and which hand-offs live off the chart.

Where does the designed model break?

The points where the model on paper stops matching reality.

"Approval is meant to go through Finance. It doesn't." "That role exists on paper. In practice, I cover it." "Every quarter-end we work around the system." "No one owns the hand-off, so it stalls."

You can point to exactly where the designed model diverges from how work runs, and why.

An org chart maps.
It never listens.

Why it holds up

People map the work as it really runs.

Every voice, not a sample

Everyone takes part, not just leadership: the whole organisation's reality, not a workshop's.

Anonymous by design

Nothing traces back to a person, so people admit the side-channels and off-chart hand-offs.

Nothing is invented

Every finding is tied to a real quote; anything the interviews don't support is left out.

The deliverable

Every conversation, turned
into the analysis you point it at.

A map of how work actually flows across the organisation, and where that reality parts ways with the model on paper, reconstructed from what people described in their own words.

You run the redesign.
Your interviewer reaches everyone.

Train it on how you run a redesign, then see it on one of your own engagements.