The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines, and in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast.

Our Services: Consulting

Have you experienced difficulty collaborating, making decisions, or creating alignment around goals? If you’re ready to reflect on how all of the parts of your company come together to deliver customer and business value, Northshore can partner with you on your organisational design. Together we’ll help you evolve your operating model—your structure, decision-making, ways of working, and capabilities—to support your strategic goals.

How do you know you’re ready to iterate your operating model?

You’ve likely been experiencing one (or more) of the following:

• Collaboration is really difficult

• Each discipline in your organisation has different (or no!) measures of success

• There are no clear, aligned goals within your organisation

• There’s no single, unified customer experience

• It takes forever to make decisions

• Existing safety guards make it impossible to implement more nimble approaches

• Different roles are poorly understood and supported

• You have a transformation program, but it’s not delivering the anticipated results

Perhaps you’ve tried making changes within your specific discipline, but you’re running into organisational barriers or failing to have the impact you desire. You see that there is a substantial amount of work to be done, but you’re unlikely to accomplish it on your own or within your department or discipline. If this sounds like your situation—and you’re ready to commit to making transformative changes to achieve your strategic goals—we can work with you to align the whole operating model around modern ways of working.

Quick overview: What is an operating model?

We believe that organisations have to look at their overall operating model to successfully transform how they work. But we realise this term may mean different things to different people. In our consulting work, we consider four key components of an operating model: 

Structure: The way your organisation is arranged and collaborates to execute work and to take advantage of new opportunities to create value. This component focuses on breaking down silos and creating cross-functional teams. The goal is to have an end-to-end process for identifying problems or opportunities, discovering ways to address them, removing uncertainty through testing and prototyping, all the way to delivering value to customers.

Decision-Making: The framework, processes, and accountabilities that enable priorities to be clearly established, decisions to be made, and the ability to adapt when warranted. One of the biggest challenges organisations face is that the people who are closest to the customers and their problems are far removed from strategic decision-making. 

Ways of Working: The daily practices, cultural norms, and mindset that shape how work is done within your organisation. Do you tend to prioritise outputs over outcomes? What types of behaviours do you reward? Do handoffs introduce more chances of miscommunication or a loss of accountability? 

Capabilities: The disciplines, techniques, and tools that enable your organisation to deliver high-value outcomes. For example, you may have someone whose job title is “designer” who doesn’t know how to do user research or design iteratively. The goal in assessing and mapping out capabilities is to determine how best to support people during transformation. This might involve coaching or training, for example, to help your team members develop new skills.

Remember: It is critical to look at these aspects holistically to create a system that supports people in achieving business and customer outcomes. Simply focusing on one aspect won’t work (as you’ve likely already discovered). If you’re curious to read more on this topic, see Why Updating Your Operating Model is Key to Transformation.

What can you expect from partnering with Northshore?

With over 25 years of hands-on experience at the intersection of customer experience, software development, and global leadership, we’ve learned what principles and patterns work to develop, scale, and mature your innovation and product development capabilities.