The Stronger Business Operating Model
Every business already has an operating model. The question is only whether it was designed deliberately or arrived by accident.
Results tell you what a business produced. They do not tell you whether it can produce them again. A company can grow this month's revenue while weakening next year's pricing power, or hit the sales number while teaching its customers to wait for the discount. Each is a good number this period and a smaller business next period, and nothing in a profit and loss statement tells them apart.
The Stronger Business Operating Model is a way of seeing the business underneath the numbers.
At its centre is the Stronger Business Ambition: what kind of stronger business are we trying to build? Around it sit five Strategic Business Assets: Value, Memory, Preference, Access and Experience. Each can be invested in, neglected, or spent, and each keeps working after the activity that built it has stopped. They are a system, not a sequence.
Holding them together is Stewardship. Everybody agrees consistency matters. Far fewer treat it as work. Consistency is the outcome. Stewardship is the work, across every asset, that produces it.
Eight questions to start with
You don't need to learn the model to use it. Answer these about your own business, and the model does its work behind them.
- The ambition. What kind of stronger business are we trying to build?
- Value. Why would anyone choose us?
- Memory. Will they think of us when it matters?
- Preference. Will they choose us over the alternatives?
- Access. Can they act on that easily?
- Experience. Did we deliver what we promised?
- Stewardship. Are we compounding what we build, or rebuilding it?
- Outcomes. Is the business becoming stronger?
One warning before you start. Your weakest asset is not automatically your biggest problem. An asset can be weak without mattering much to the business you are trying to build, while another in reasonable shape is quietly holding everything else back.
The model in full
The complete model, with the diagram, the definitions and the posture exercise. Free to read and free to download.
Over the coming months, I'll take the model apart one piece at a time here in Musings.
