70% of transformations fail. Yours doesn’t have to!
Tools / OMG Canvas
OMG! Introducing The Operating Model Goals Canvas
Making change happen—and stick—is a real challenge. This is why we see big, scary numbers like 70% of transformation efforts fail.
If you’re trying to make changes within your organisation but repeatedly running into bigger systemic problems you can’t solve on your own, the Operating Model Goal Canvas (or OMG Canvas) is for you. This tool can help you get both a snapshot of where your org is today and chart a course for where you’d like to be in the future. Need a quick refresher on what we mean by “operating model”? You can find that here.
In the rest of this article, I’ll offer a deeper dive into the components of the canvas and how to use it, but if you’d just like to jump in and get started, you can grab your template here.
What is the Operating Model Goals (OMG) Canvas?
The Operating Model Goals Canvas is a handy tool to record and diagnose your current operating model and design preferred operating models to achieve your company goals.
How does the OMG Canvas work?
The OMG Canvas helps you take a systemic snapshot of your current product operating model and identify and prioritise sticking points (What’s working well? Where are things falling apart?) Plus, it provides a framework to design a target operating model that improves speed to value and unlocks achieving strategic organisational goals, whether that's more effective collaboration, enhanced customer focus, data-driven decision-making, or shifting to outcomes.
Who should use the OMG Canvas?
The OMG Canvas is a resource for anyone who is feeling frustrated by their efforts to make broader organisational changes, generally those in a functional leadership role like Head or VP of Product, Design, etc. You can start to fill out the canvas on your own, but for best results, you’ll want to assemble a cross-functional team with representatives from all of the major functions within your organisation. Including broad perspectives will be the key to success.
What can you do with the OMG Canvas?
There are a few major outcomes the OMG Canvas can help you achieve.
1. Identify the current situation
Use the canvas to get a real-time snapshot of what’s happening within your org today.
2. Diagnose and prioritise sticking points
Use the canvas to discover what’s working really well, what are your superpowers that you want to celebrate and amplify, and what’s stopping you from doing as well as you want to or as well as you could.
3. Solve the problem and design the future state
Use the canvas as a blueprint to guide experiments and iterations to help you move closer to your ideal state.
A step-by-step guide to filling out the OMG Canvas
Here’s how we recommend approaching each section in the OMG Canvas.
1. Strategic Goals
What is your organisation trying to achieve (e.g. faster time to value delivery, focus on customer satisfaction, data-driven decision making, introduce AI)?
2. Ways of Working
This category sounds broad because it is! Draw out how all the functions (really) work to get from organisational vision/strategy to portfolio and product strategy and delivery. Overlay the approaches from different functions to show how they impact each other. What does continuous improvement and optimisation look like? How does marketing integrate with product development? How do legal and compliance contribute? Map out the full picture of how teams, and teams-of-teams, work.
What values and principles guide the people? What are the cultural norms and mindset that shape how work gets done?
What incentives guide behaviour? What behaviour gets rewarded (whether explicit in terms of bonuses, success measures, performance reviews or implicit in terms of what actually gets noticed and celebrated or who gets interesting work or promotions)?
3. Decision Making
This rubric encompasses the frameworks, processes, and accountabilities that enable clearly established priorities, decision-making, and the flexibility to adjust when necessary at all levels. It also includes governance: How does leadership get involved in the ways of working and how do things get prioritised, funded, reviewed, signed off on, and measured?
4. Capabilities
What capabilities do you need to deliver high-value outcomes? This can include skills, practises, and tools as well as the roles that come together to encompass these capabilities.
5. Collaboration Structure
How do people work together today? What organisational silos and structures enable or hinder teams to work together? Is there clarity on who is responsible for what? Any gaps or duplication causing friction?
A few points to keep in mind as you fill out the canvas:
These boxes are deceptively small and simple, but remember A LOT goes on in each area.
Because these sections can rapidly expand, especially once you begin to invite others to contribute, you may want to use a whiteboarding tool like Miro or Mural to facilitate collaboration.
Your goal is to bring together a holistic view of the system to understand cause and effect better. Many pain points go unresolved because we don’t have the remit to solve problems outside our vertical (functional) or horizontal (product/service) sphere of influence in the system. Looking at how value gets created in your organisation can help you and your peers dig into (and eventually solve) root causes together.
Tips to help you get the most out of the OMG Canvas
Don’t get too intimidated by the blank page. Your first goal is to capture your perspective of the current state. But as soon as possible, invite a representative group to help you flesh out the complete picture of where you are today.
Once you’ve co-created a full picture of the ecosystem with your representative group, highlight friction and pain points in achieving your goals and working effectively, but don’t forget to highlight what works exceptionally well, too.
Prioritise areas for improvement to help you achieve your strategic goals.
Now, you can use the canvas to design a blueprint for your unique target operating model. What helps your unique organisation improve how you create value? What superpowers can you leverage? Here is a handy list of 10 strengths for successful transformation. We don’t recommend you simply copy and paste someone else’s model, but rather consider what principles and patterns empower organisations to transform their ability to compete in today’s VUCA environment and win at reaching the strategic goals you are pursuing. This could be something like “do more with less,” “accelerate speed to value,” “become more customer-centred or product-led” or “integrate AI into our offering.”
Experiment with the new approach, pilot the ideas to see how it works in real life in your context. Iron out the kinks. What enablement do the teams and leaders need? What mindset needs to shift? What skills development do you need to invest in? Share learnings.
Much like a product is never done, your operating model is also a living system that will continually evolve and needs to be nurtured to meet changing demands and new capabilities.
Give it a try and let us know what happens—we can’t wait to hear how it goes! And if you ever get stuck or feel like you need some support in using the canvas to its full capacity, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
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Have you experienced difficulty achieving your strategic goals, collaborating, making decisions, or creating alignment? 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 org design. Together we’ll help you evolve your operating model—your structure, decision-making, ways of working, and capabilities—to support your strategic goals. Learn more
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