Begin with promises
Define the outcomes and obligations the operating model exists to support.
Operating model • Work design • Decision rights
Design the operating model around the promises, not the boxes.
For organizations whose structure, accountabilities, work placement, capacity, or decision rights no longer fit the strategy or the way value must flow.
Where this fits in SCALE
See → Clarify → Analyze → Lift
Map the promises and work, clarify the design requirements, evaluate options and tradeoffs, and sequence the transition to a more reliable model.
Explore the full SCALE MethodDesign the flow
Determine where work should enter, move, pause, escalate, and complete.
Place authority with accountability
Align decision rights, professional judgment, ownership, and escalation.
Match capacity to demand
Design roles, sites, shared services, technology, and support around the real work and variability.
Where Scale That Works helps
Practical outcomes for operating model design.
The work is designed to produce decision-ready outputs that leaders can use, explain, govern, and sustain.
01
Target operating model
A practical design for work, roles, authority, capacity, systems, and governance.
02
Decision-rights map
Clear ownership for recurring decisions, exceptions, handoffs, and enterprise tradeoffs.
03
Work-placement logic
What should remain local, become shared, centralize, automate, or stay close to the customer.
04
Transition blueprint
A sequenced path that protects essential promises while moving to the future model.
What gets assessed
The operating questions this work must answer.
What promise is the business making?
Service-level expectations, speed, urgency, special handling, customer or patient experience, clinical need, contract requirements, and whether every segment needs the same level of service.
Where should the work happen?
Workflow placement, centralization potential, local versus shared work, routing rules, handoffs, exception management, quality checks, and system sequence.
Is the footprint creating avoidable cost?
Site logic, hub design, inventory placement, fulfillment lanes, parcel zones, service geography, labor availability, capacity, and the operational causes behind long-distance or high-cost work.
What could break during growth or change?
Regulatory constraints, licensure requirements, quality controls, staffing model, leadership capacity, system limitations, data visibility, and post-close or transformation execution risk.
Practical outcomes
A clearer view of where the model creates value, cost, risk, and avoidable complexity.
Engagements can be scoped as a diligence diagnostic, service-level review, network and workflow assessment, cost-to-serve review, or operating-risk blueprint.
Operating thesis check
A practical view of whether the service, workflow, labor, network, and support model can support the investment or transformation thesis.
Complexity and cost map
A clearer picture of where cost is being driven by service levels, handoffs, exception handling, network choices, or inherited operating habits.
Constraint reality view
A distinction between requirements that materially matter and assumptions that may be creating unnecessary drag.
Execution priority roadmap
A capacity-paced, dependency-aware sequence for what to validate, redesign, preserve, centralize, standardize, or address after the decision is made.
Common questions
Questions leaders ask about operating model design.
When is Operating Model Design useful?
For organizations whose structure, accountabilities, work placement, capacity, or decision rights no longer fit the strategy or the way value must flow.
What does the work typically produce?
The scope produces evidence-based findings, practical decision logic, a sequenced path forward, and the ownership, measures, and routines appropriate to the engagement.
How is the scope determined?
The work is bounded around the decision, promises at risk, processes, teams, sites, evidence, exclusions, and definition of done agreed with the client.
How does Scale That Works avoid creating dependency?
The method is explained as it is used, client leaders participate in the work, and tools, judgment, standards, and routines are transferred at a level proportionate to the scope.
Choose the right level of rigor
A self-assessment can surface a concern. Diligence must validate it.
The free Operating Clarity Assessment helps leaders identify where to look. This paid engagement determines what the evidence supports, what operating risk matters, and what should happen next.
Free self-assessment
Reflection and initial pattern recognition
Useful for internal discussion, early concern framing, and deciding whether a closer look is warranted.
Take the Operating Clarity AssessmentPaid diligence
Independent evidence and decision support
Validates findings, pressure-tests the operating model, identifies execution risk, and defines a Sequenced Transition Path.
Discuss formal diligence →