Operational efficiency methodologies typically appeal to measuring the following characteristics:
Speed. Costs. Load. Number of processes. Number of people.
All of these are important. But if you look at it that way, you can miss the main thing: does this business model help you unlock potential?
As the Director of Organizational Development and Transformation at Octava Capital, I love the metaphor of a garden when we talk about complex corporate systems.
It is home to different trees, bushes, and flowers. They need different soil, different watering, different sun. You can’t care for an apple tree the same way you care for a rose and wonder why one of them doesn’t bloom.
The same goes for businesses.
Each of them is at its own stage of development. It has its own team, processes, culture, product, market, and set of challenges. Therefore, you should start not by standardizing the operating model, but by understanding the nature of the business.
I use the zone of proximal development approach when you want an entity to reach the next level of development without heroic deeds. I used to use it in mentoring, and today I see more and more often how much it works for business.
The best results are not the biggest changes, not sky-high KPIs, but those that the system is already internally ready for. They are the ones that take root, give strength and become the basis for the next stage of development.
Perhaps this is precisely the role of management. Not to pull all companies to the same standard. And to be good gardeners is to see the potential of each business, create conditions for its growth and not demand that the rose bear fruit like an apple tree.
Therefore, for me, the effectiveness of the operating model is about:
– what development potential does the business have
– what strategy will help to reveal this potential
– what plan will allow to go this way without strain
Because the maturity of the management of a holding is determined not by the performance metrics of its businesses, but by how well we know how to help each of them become stronger!