Your Overheads Aren’t High. Your Operating Model is Just Bad.
You’re not overstaffed. You’re underdesigned.
Most SME leadership teams believe a Target Operating Model is something you build when you hit 1,000 employees, go international, or hire McKinsey to validate your PowerPoint.
Until then?
Apparently, it’s all hustle
With a pinch of ego and a spoonful of gut.
(Or is it the other way around? 😉)
But here’s what these same businesses do have:
A bloated tech stack with overlapping tools and no integration
Three layers of signoff for one invoice
A dedicated inbox with a zillion email threads chasing timesheets
Sales teams winning deals that ops scrambles to deliver
Endless firefighting
Confused ownership
And two ops people duct-taping the backend together - again
So no.
It’s not that they’re “too small” for a Target Operating Model.
It’s that they’ve scaled without one - and now they’re paying for it.
The Sales-First Spiral
This is the SME loop:
Set a revenue goal
Hire more salespeople
Celebrate the wins
Scramble to deliver
Blame ops for inefficiency
Hire more in ops
Still no clarity. Still no accountability. Still no system.
Repeat.
Every. Single. Quarter.
They’re not scaling a business.
They’re inflating the frontend and crossing your fingers the backend survives it.
And when it doesn’t?
They blame “growing pains.”
But is it just that though? Perhaps…
They’re not drowning in overhead because ops grew too fast.
They’re drowning because you scaled without a spine.
What’s Missing? A Target Operating Model
Let’s kill the corporate mystique
A Target Operating Model (TOM) isn’t some 80-slide consulting deck.
It’s a practical blueprint for how a business actually delivers value - now and at scale.
It answers questions like:
What do we sell? To who? And how does it get delivered?
What roles exist to support that flow?
What systems help or hinder that delivery?
What data matters? What decisions get made where?
What shouldn’t we be doing?
The Three Layers of Chaos a Missing TOM Creates
1. Structural Chaos
No defined value streams
No role clarity
Accountability changes with every re-org or sick day
2. Process Chaos
Everything is reactive
Knowledge lives in heads, not systems
Every win creates new friction
3. Tool Chaos
Systems are bought to “solve” a team’s problem - not the business’s
Overlap, duplication, manual work
Fancy dashboards with zero decision power
Together, these form a vicious loop:
Poor structure leads to bad process → bad process requires more tools → more tools break structure even more.
Want to Stress-Test Your Operating Model? Ask These:
✅ Do we know how work actually flows end-to-end, from lead to cash?
✅ Are our tools helping delivery or just adding admin?
✅ Can we scale without doubling ops headcount?
✅ Do our metrics drive decisions - or just report on chaos?
✅ Who owns key processes - and do they even know?
✅ Is anyone talking about customer experience across functions?
If the answers are vague, defensive, or “it depends”
Say Beeeeeeeeeeeeep!!! we don’t have a Target Operating Model.
Maybe a wish list, duct-taped to a sales forecast.
Think AI Will Help?
No.
AI will just show you rot at scale.
Agents that can’t run because your process isn’t documented
Workflows that loop endlessly because no one mapped the handovers
Dashboards that surface the same mess you’ve been ignoring
AI isn’t your opportunity. It’s your audit.
And if your ops model is broken? The agent will tell your customers!
🧠 BOS Challenge
Stop saying “We need to scale.”
Start asking, “Can we deliver at scale without collapsing?”
If you’re not designing for that,
you’re not scaling the business.
You’re scaling the bottlenecks.
🧠 BOS Mindset for the Week
A Target Operating Model isn’t about looking good on a slide.
It’s about running a business that doesn’t break every time it grows.
Until next time!
Remember - Less chaos. More BOS
Khyati Pal
Voice of BOS | Business Operations Streamlined