08 How To Master Operating Models

Twenty operating models, each taught end to end — with the worked models to run them.

An operating model is how a business turns strategy into day-to-day delivery — the structure, processes, decisions and capabilities that make the work happen. This handbook teaches all twenty models in the Operating Models category — one chapter each — from designing the target operating model and its capabilities, through the process maps, decision rights and sourcing choices that shape it, to the lean, agile and product operating models used to run it. From the Target Operating Model and Process Mapping to Six Sigma DMAIC, the Theory of Constraints and the Service Blueprint.

What you get

The complete PDF handbook plus twenty worked Excel models — one for every model in the book. Blue input cells you change, formula cells that respond, and a Read-me tab on each, so you can run the numbers on your own assumptions.

How every chapter is built

Read one and you can build any. Each model follows the same thirteen-section rhythm: the question it answers, what it is, who uses it, its anatomy, inputs and outputs, how to build it step by step, a worked example, strengths, limits and pitfalls, industry notes, how it connects to the other models, modern relevance, using AI on it, and a practitioner’s checklist.

The twenty models

the Target Operating Model, the Capability Model, Organisation Design, Decision Rights, Process Mapping, SIPOC, the Lean Operating Model, Shared Services, Outsourcing, Offshoring, Centralised versus Decentralised, the Agile Operating Model, the Product Operating Model, the DevOps Model, RACI, RAPID, the Theory of Constraints, Six Sigma DMAIC, Value Stream Mapping and the Service Blueprint.

The learning path

The chapters are ordered as a single connected build, not an alphabetical list — from designing the operating model and its capabilities, to mapping the processes and decisions that run it, to the lean, agile and product ways of operating.

Who it’s for

Chief operating officers, transformation and operations leaders, organisation designers and consultants who must turn strategy into a structure that delivers — and make it work in practice.

How to use it

Work straight through to master the category, or jump to a single model when you need it for live work.

Book 08 of the Business Framework Library, part of The Investment Banking Practitioner’s Handbook Series. Master this category on its own, or reach for the Business Framework Compendium when you want the one-page reference to all 467 frameworks.

By John Colley — Cambridge University MA · MBA with Distinction, Bayes Business School · 30+ years in investment banking, M&A and private equity.