Every organisation we meet believes its operating model is the product of deliberate design. In practice it is usually the sum of decisions made under pressure: a workaround here, a temporary approval there, an extra review step added after one incident. None of those choices were wrong at the time – together they eventually cost more than the problem they solved.

1. Decisions queue behind meetings

When the same question appears on three consecutive steering agendas, the issue is not diligence, it is that nobody holds the decision. A reliable test: pick any decision made last quarter and ask who was accountable. If the answer takes more than ten seconds, the accountability is unclear.

2. Reports disagree with each other

Two reports using different definitions of the same measure will always produce an argument instead of an insight. Reconciling by hand each month is a tax on your best analysts. Fix it with three rules:

  • Every core metric has a named owner and a written definition.
  • The definition lives next to the data, not in a document nobody opens.
  • Disagreements are resolved by changing the definition, never by editing the number.

3. Onboarding takes longer than it should

If a competent new joiner needs weeks to work out how things really run, process knowledge lives in people rather than systems. That is a concentration of risk – and it caps how fast the organisation can grow.

4. Work moves forward by escalation

Escalation is legitimate for genuine exceptions. When it becomes the standard route for ordinary work, the process lacks the authority to finish a task. Count how many items on your leadership agenda arrived there by exception rather than by design.

The cost of an unclear process is not the inefficiency. It is the senior time spent resolving the same ambiguity every month.

5. Change requires a project

If every improvement needs a programme, a business case and a steering committee, small changes never happen. Healthy operating models let teams make reversible improvements inside an agreed boundary.

What to do about it

Rewiring does not require a full reorganisation. Start with one value stream: make the accountability explicit, agree the metrics that matter, and give the team a mandate to change the steps that get in the way. Then repeat somewhere else.

Our digital transformation programme exists for exactly this situation, and the manufacturing analytics case study shows what the first ninety days look like in practice.