If you’ve decided to take on an Operating Model Transformation, you’ve likely envisioned an end state where everything is humming along, everyone is working in harmony, and work is done in a friction-free, high-performing manner. It’s a feeling of freedom, speed, and efficiency that you aspire to, but did you know that there are specific features and definitions of this feeling?

In my experience designing, implementing, and scaling Operating Models inside of organizations of all shapes and sizes, I’ve come to distinguish four specific dimensions of maturity that must be addressed in concert with your efforts. These dimensions are interconnected and can neither be matured sequentially nor in isolation. In fact, no one area can fall too far behind the others without creating a serious drag on those further out ahead. 

In this article, I’ll cover the four dimensions of Operating Model maturity so you know exactly where to focus your efforts as you lead your organization into the future. I’ll also introduce the five stages of maturity, which provides helpful context as you create benchmarks for the work (because, alas, that feeling doesn’t occur overnight.)

The Four Dimensions of Operating Model Maturity

1. Leadership

The first dimension, leadership, refers to both a position and a mindset in an Operating Model. 

Positionally, an Operating Model Transformation requires active commitment from the C-Suite through senior and mid-level management, all the way down to each individual contributor. No part of the organization can opt out of this kind of Transformation. 

Most Op Model Transformations start in the C-Suite, usually within the technology organization, but it can’t end there. And boy, I have spent a lot of time with frustrated CTOs who are trying to prove that transformation can’t just be treated as “the IT Model” (more on that here). It's normal for experimentation to start this way, but an enthusiastic CEO and business line partnerships are required for the model to thrive in the long run.

Mindset, on the other hand, requires an enterprise-wide commitment to customer focus, servant leadership, and a collective sense of ownership of both problems and solutions. Change champions and early adopters are crucial to seeding new ideas about the Operating Model and the opportunities it brings. 

2. Ecosystems

Ecosystems refer to the visible and invisible structures inside an organization. The easiest to identify are the written-down structures, such as org charts, business units, P&Ls, and resource pools. 

Invisible ecosystems, like team behaviors, functional silos, and cross-functional teams, are equally crucial for the positive and negative impacts they can have on enabling change. 

Here, you’ll typically see culture emerge as the primary obstacle to success, so change management is a critical leadership consideration as you embark on the work ahead. New team organization and alignment is likely to fracture the established org structures as the Operating Model evolves, and this can be hard for the “this is how we’ve always done things” crowd to swallow. Being prepared for both active and passive detractors in the cultural space is important so that new ecosystems can have room to experiment and flourish. 

3. Talent

No matter what technologies come along, people and teams will continue to be at the heart of the work—how you organize around the tech needs to become nimbler. This dimension not only assesses who you have in roles and redefines the roles you fill, but also examines things like team size, topology, and skill alignment.

A common issue for organizations as they begin to rally around a singular Operating Model is consistent job descriptions, job families, and career pathing for new and specific roles.  

Hiring new kinds of talent can be a difficult decision for companies because it’s not just about attracting new kinds of candidates but also about upskilling hiring managers so they can attract, hire, and retain talent with skills they may be unfamiliar with managing. 

Here’s my advice on evaluating the common skills and competencies required for agile and product-led roles against the skill set of your current team. This will help you focus on upskilling in the most impactful ways, as well as hiring to fill in the gaps.

4. Standards and Practices

Every organization needs standards and practices to define how work gets done. These are often the first to be challenged during Operating Model Transformation because people aren’t big fans of change or feeling vulnerable (which is exactly why transformational leadership is so important for this whole thing to work).

New ways of working won’t necessarily result in no standards or practices being implemented, but it can sometimes feel like chaos is the replacement for the comfort of the bureaucracy of the old ways. To navigate that, some standards and practices you can focus on are things like governance models, playbooks, templates for artifacts like roadmaps and KPI reporting, documentation of systems, and automated tooling for planning and reporting. 

This dimension is also the area that will typically need constant reinvention as the organization grows and matures. Additional layers of complexity, growth in size or market offerings, etc., will demand new structure in how work gets documented, organized, and shared. This is part of why the Tuckpoint team always says that there’s no such thing as “done” when it comes to Transformation (but there sure as heck is such a thing as maturity!). 

The Transformation Curve: Stages of Maturity

Now that you understand the four dimensions of Operating Model maturity, it’s helpful to understand the typical stages you’ll encounter so you can benchmark your progress and see where teams (or leadership) might be stalling out. 

The 5 stages include:

1. Exploring

2. Emerging

3. Transforming

4. Scaling

5. Maturing

To learn more about what you can expect in each stage as you define, establish, ratify, and scale new ways of working, download my full white paper about operating model maturity. I share more details around the transformation curve, along with the “watch outs” and green flags you should have on your radar as you navigate the five stages.