NO
NEXT.
NEW.
A leap forward is never an iteration!Your operating model was built for a world that no longer exists.
Every legacy TOM encodes yesterday's constraints: Information scarcity, coordination cost, human-only throughput. AI removes those constraints. Optimizing a structure built on obsolete assumptions is wasted motion. The only honest starting point is a blank page.
What do you need to thrive?
One question replaces the entire as-is analysis.
Not "what do we have?" but "what does winning require?"
Markets, capabilities, decision rights, speed. Defined from the future backwards.
Consensus is not a design criterion. Success is.
How to get it done?
- Blank page. Design the target model with zero reference to today's org chart. No grandfathering, no political pre-commitments.
- Design for success, not consensus. One design team with a mandate, not a committee. Trade-offs decided, not averaged.
- Right stakeholders at the right time. Involve the top team when direction is set, not while it forms. Sequencing beats broad early alignment.
- Relentless execution. Hard cut-over milestones, visible ownership, no parallel legacy structures allowed to survive.
AI changes both sides of the equation
The design object: The greenfield TOM must assume AI-native operations: Flatter structures, fewer coordination layers, decision rights redistributed between humans and machines, spans of control rethought where AI carries execution load. A TOM that merely "adds AI" to old structures is a dead end.
The design tool: AI compresses the greenfield process itself: benchmarking, scenario modeling, and drafting the target model in days instead of months. Conviction and courage remain human; the analytical heavy lifting no longer is.