Target operating model
A target operating model (fondly known to all as the TOM) is the desired state of the operating model of an organisation.
Desired, wished-for, in a perfect world.
Thus, a target operating model is a kind of Platonic ideal. But we do not inhabit an abstract realm of essential beauty.[1]
No. We inhabit a grubby, tedious cave, and we are chained together and forced to look and the same craggy walls, and the shadows these perfect ideals throw are disfigured. Monstrous. Our world is intractable, messy, irritating and prone to outbreaks of Sod’s law. Life in it is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
Desired by middle management, that is. Therefore a TOM trucks in terms of unicorns, rainbows, and popular delusions of the management mob. There is no space in a target operating model for human foible, unexpected contingency, nuance, shade of meaning or obstinacy.
- ↑ Well, I certainly don’t.