Operations
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Three signs your operating model is holding you back
An operating model that was designed for a different stage of growth doesn't announce itself as a problem. It shows up as friction — in meetings that don't resolve anything, decisions that take too long, and teams that work hard but can't seem to move fast.
Most companies don't redesign their operating model until something breaks visibly: a missed product launch, a talent exodus, a quarter that comes in well below plan. But the model usually starts failing long before the crisis. The early signals are subtler and easier to rationalize.
Recognizing those signals early is the difference between a planned evolution and a forced restructuring. The second is always more expensive, more disruptive, and more painful than the first.
Sign one: decisions keep escalating
When operational decisions routinely land on the CEO's desk — pricing calls, hiring approvals, vendor selections — it's rarely because the CEO insists on control. It's because the layers below don't have clear enough authority to act.
This is a structural problem, not a people problem. In most cases, the individuals involved are perfectly capable of making the call. What's missing is an explicit framework that tells them which decisions are theirs, which require input from others, and which genuinely need executive approval. Without that framework, the rational move is to escalate — because the cost of making the wrong call feels higher than the cost of waiting.
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Sign two: cross-functional work requires heroics
Every company has some degree of cross-functional friction. But when getting two teams to collaborate on a straightforward initiative requires a senior sponsor, a dedicated project manager, and weekly alignment meetings, the model is creating drag.
The underlying issue is usually a mismatch between how work flows and how the organization is structured. Teams are optimized for their own deliverables, not for the handoffs between them. The result is that horizontal work — the kind that creates the most value — becomes the hardest to execute.
Sign three: planning takes longer than execution
When the annual planning process stretches across months, involves dozens of stakeholders, and still produces a plan that feels disconnected from reality by Q2, the model is consuming more energy maintaining itself than producing results.
Planning should be a tool for making choices, not a ritual for avoiding them. If the planning cycle is long, contentious, and yields vague outcomes, it's a symptom of unclear decision rights and misaligned incentive structures — problems that live in the operating model, not in the planning calendar.
The fix is rarely to plan more carefully. It's to simplify the structure underneath the plan so that fewer things need to be negotiated in the first place.
