A target operating model example is easier to use than a blank framework, because an owner can argue with a filled page and cannot argue with a theory. Picture an owner-led service firm whose founder still approves every quote, every hire, and every unhappy customer call. The model is not another organization chart. It is the short list of decisions that name who owns a job, what good looks like, and which meeting keeps that promise honest.
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Decide the customer promise, the three outcomes the owner will stop owning, and the weekly numbers that prove the promise is being kept. Put those decisions on one page and run them for 90 days. The target operating model guide covers what a model is and how to build one, while this page shows one owner-led firm putting the first decisions into a normal week.
What Should an Owner Decide First?
Start with the promise, not the boxes on a chart. Harbor & Pine Field Services is a composite rather than a client case, and it stands in for the owner-led service firms we see around Boston and the New Hampshire Seacoast. The owner, Maya, still prices the larger jobs, still hires every technician, and still takes the angry calls.
The firm is busy, and the work it is proudest of is the work that slips. Repeat commercial accounts wait more than a week for a scheduled visit. New quotes sit in Maya’s inbox for days, and two senior techs spend Friday afternoon rebuilding schedules that were already promised on Monday.
Before Maya picks software or redraws the chart, she has to answer three questions that the rest of the model depends on. Who is the customer we will protect when the week gets tight? Which outcomes will still have my name on them in 90 days? What number, reviewed every Monday, tells us the promise held?
Those three answers are the model, and everything else is a supporting choice. Orgvue’s operating-model work treats people, process, organization, information, and technology as parts of one design, not as separate projects. An owner does not need all nine parts on day one. She needs the parts that change who decides what this month.
Maya wrote the answers on a notepad before the next staff meeting. They are short on purpose, so the team can argue with them:
- Protect contracted commercial accounts before one-off residential calls.
- Stop personally pricing routine jobs and stop personally hiring technicians.
- Review three numbers every Monday: quote turnaround, on-time visits, and rework.
That is the whole first draft of the model. It is specific enough for the team to argue with, and small enough to run in the following week.
What Does One Target Operating Model Example Look Like?
A useful example names the work, the owner of that work, and the proof that the work happened. Harbor & Pine’s one-page model has five rows. Each row is a decision Maya used to make herself, now assigned to a named role, with a number she can see without opening a job file.
| Work | Who decides | Proof on Monday | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Routine quotes. | Estimator. | Sent within one business day. | Maya prices only unusual or large jobs. |
| Weekly schedule. | Dispatcher. | Most contracted visits stay on the promised day. | Techs stop rebuilding Friday schedules. |
| Technician hiring. | Field lead. | Seat filled against a written scorecard. | Maya interviews only the final two. |
| Customer recovery. | Office manager. | Unhappy call closed within a day. | Maya hears the pattern, not every call. |
| Cash and job margin. | Owner, with the bookkeeper. | Margin by job type, reviewed monthly. | Low-margin work is repriced or refused. |
Read the table as a set of trades, not as a wish list. The estimator can send a quote in one day only if Maya stops rewriting it. The dispatcher can hit the visit promise only if residential one-offs wait when a contracted account is already on the board. The field lead can hire only if the scorecard is written before the interview, not after Maya meets someone she likes. The dollar line that separates a routine quote from an owner quote is hers to set. The example does not pick it for her.
Notice what is missing: there is no new brand, no new software stack, and no new layer of managers. The operating model design guide is the right place for that longer design, while this example stops at the decisions that change Tuesday.
How Does the Example Change a Normal Week?
A model that never shows up on the calendar is a poster, not an operating system. Harbor & Pine runs the page in four fixed touches, and none of them need a new tool.
- Monday, 20 minutes. Maya, the estimator, the dispatcher, and the office manager read the five proofs. They do not tell stories. A miss gets one cause and one owner.
- Daily, 10 minutes. The dispatcher locks tomorrow’s contracted visits before anyone adds a one-off. Residential work fills the gaps, not the other way around.
- Wednesday. The field lead reviews open technician seats against the scorecard. Maya joins only if a finalist is ready.
- First Friday of the month. Maya and the bookkeeper look at gross margin by job type. Work under the floor gets repriced or dropped.
The first Monday will feel blunt, because quote turnaround will miss and a contracted visit will slip when someone said yes to a neighbor. That miss is the point. The page makes the trade visible, so the team can choose it on purpose the next time the same collision shows up.
Keep the meeting smaller than the problem it is meant to solve. Twenty minutes is enough when the proofs are counted before anyone sits down. If the team spends the slot rebuilding the numbers, the model is still living in someone’s head rather than on the page.
Two rules keep the week from sliding back to the old habit. First, a decision in the table cannot be quietly retaken by the owner, because if Maya rewrites a routine quote, the estimator’s row is fiction. Second, a miss is a scheduling fact rather than a character flaw. The dispatcher reports the slipped visit, the room picks the next promised day, and nobody performs an apology.
Which Choices Should Stay Out of the First Draft?
Owners stall because the first draft tries to settle the whole company at once. Harbor & Pine left five tempting choices off the page for the first 90 days.
- A new field-service app. The schedule failed because two people could both move it, not because the calendar was on paper.
- A new middle manager. Twenty-two people do not need a layer. They need three named decision owners.
- A rewritten handbook. Procedures matter after the decision owner is clear. A binder does not create one.
- Incentive pay. Bonuses on a fuzzy promise pay people to game the number. Set the promise first.
- A second location. Capacity math comes after the current book of work is on time.
This is the cut that makes the example usable for an owner who is still in the work. A target operating model example that lists every department, every system, and every policy is a design project, not a decision. The owner still has to price Thursday’s job. Cut until the page changes one week of work.
There is a simple test for every row you are tempted to add. If a row does not change who says yes this month, it waits. Technology, pay plans, and new locations are real decisions. They are not the first ones an owner should freeze on the page.
How Do You Know the Example Is Working?
Judge the page by movement, not by how complete it looks on the wall. Harbor & Pine picks three proofs and ignores everything else for 90 days.
- Quote turnaround on routine jobs, from several days to one business day.
- Contracted visits kept on the promised day, from an uncounted rate to 90 percent.
- Owner hours on pricing, hiring, and complaint calls, from most of the week to two reserved blocks.
The third number is the one owners skip, and it is the one that tells you the model is real. If Maya’s calendar still holds every quote review, the table is a wish. Block the time, then count whether the block stays empty of old work.
A miss is useful. If on-time visits sit at 70 percent in week three, the Monday meeting asks one question: which promise did we break to say yes to something else? The answer is usually a one-off job that jumped the queue. The fix is to put that job back in line, not to add a sixth row to the page.
At day 90, keep, cut, or rewrite each row. Add a row only when one of the five is boringly reliable. That is how a one-page example grows into a full model without becoming a binder no one opens.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks how often new establishments are still open a year later. Across census divisions, recent one-year survival has generally landed from the high 70s to the mid-80s percent, and it drops in recession birth years. Survival is not the same as a calm week. A firm can be open and still run on the owner’s inbox. The Monday numbers tell you which one you are.
Where Should the Owner Stay in the Model?
The point of the example is not to push the owner out. It is to put the owner on the decisions only she should make. At Harbor & Pine, Maya keeps three seats: the customer promise, the margin floor, and the unusual jobs that still need her judgment.
She leaves pricing below that line, technician hiring, the daily schedule, and the first recovery call. Those seats have names. If a name is out, a written backup decides. The work does not bounce back to her inbox “just this once.”
That split is also how you tell this page from an org chart. A chart shows reporting lines. The model shows decision rights. A decision rights framework is the right next read if two people still think they own the same yes. The roles and responsibilities matrix is where those rights get written down by task, after the five rows are stable.
Owners who skip this split stay as the emergency brake. The team learns to wait. Quotes slow down. The model looks finished and changes nothing. Name the seats you are giving away in the same meeting where you name the seats you are keeping.
What Should You Fix Before You Copy This Example?
Do not copy Harbor & Pine’s lines as if they were yours. Copy the shape. Maya’s quote limit is the point where her judgment still changes the price. Your line will be different. The test is the same: below the line, someone else can decide without calling you.
Fix these four things before you adopt the page. Each one takes less than an hour if you already know the work:
- Write the customer you will protect when two jobs collide. “Everyone” is not a promise.
- Name one person per row. A shared owner is no owner.
- Pick a proof you can count from work you already track. Do not invent a dashboard to start.
- Block the Monday 20 minutes on the calendar before you announce the model.
If you cannot name the person, you are not ready for that row. Drop it. Three true rows beat five hopeful ones. The Chalifour Consulting Group’s work with owner-led firms starts the same way. First comes a short discovery of how decisions actually move. Then the team gets a page it can run. Then someone stays to keep the Monday meeting honest.
Schedule a Strategy Session to turn your first five decisions into a page you can run next Monday.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a target operating model example?
It is a filled-in page for one company, not a definition. This one shows an owner-led service firm assigning five decisions to named roles, with a Monday number for each. Use it as a pattern, then replace the limits and the roles with your own.
How is this different from an org chart?
An org chart shows who reports to whom. A target operating model shows who may decide, what they owe, and which number proves it. You can have a clean chart and still have every yes route through the owner. If that is the case, draw the decision page before you redraw the boxes.
How long should the first version stay in place?
Run it for 90 days before you add rows. Review the three proofs every Monday. Rewrite a row only when the same miss has the same cause for three weeks. Adding a row early is how the page turns back into a project plan.
Do I need new software to use this example?
No. Harbor & Pine runs the model on a wall schedule and a one-page scorecard. Buy software after the decision owner is clear. A new app on top of two people who can both move the schedule just makes the conflict faster.
When should I ask for help with the first page?
Ask when you can describe the friction but cannot get the team to keep the seats you assigned. A short working session can force the promise, the five rows, and the Monday agenda into a page the team will actually use. That is a better use of outside help than a long design document.
Put the Example on One Page This Week
Write the promise, the five decision rows, and the Monday time slot. Run that page for 90 days before you add a tool, a manager, or a second location. If you want a second set of eyes on the first draft, talk with a team that stays through implementation, not just the diagram.
Request a Strategy Session and bring the decisions you are still making yourself.