As an operating model strategy consultant, we helped a global logistics company redesign its operating model across North America and Europe in a 17-week engagement — reducing duplicated operational activities by 38% and speeding up executive decision-making by 27%, after revenue had tripled in five years without the operating model keeping pace.
Revenue Tripled. The Operating Model Didn't.
After several years of sustained expansion across North America and Europe, this global logistics company had opened new distribution centres, strengthened international partnerships, and grown revenue by almost 3x within 5 years — transforming from a regional operator into a multinational supply chain partner.
Growth had achieved exactly what leadership planned. It had also exposed a business still operating according to assumptions designed for a much smaller organisation. Projects moved more slowly. Approvals required multiple levels of management. Regional teams solved identical problems in different ways. The business had not reached the limits of market demand. It had reached the limits of its operating model.
What 17 Weeks of Mapping Decisions Revealed
Rather than focusing on organisational charts, we examined how the business actually functioned — through executive workshops, regional interviews and process observations across commercial, operational and support teams spanning both regions.
Business units had become increasingly autonomous, yet governance remained highly centralised. Operational excellence varied significantly across regions because best practices were shared informally rather than systematically. Leadership meetings focused on resolving operational issues that should have been addressed much earlier within the organisation.
Redesigning for Scale, Not Structure
Working closely with the executive leadership team, we redesigned the operating model around scalability rather than hierarchy, avoiding large-scale organisational disruption.
- Redistributed decision-making authority to regional leadership through clearly defined governance structures, allowing faster local response while maintaining enterprise-wide consistency.
- Replaced informal working methods with shared operational standards, so successful practices could be replicated across every market.
- Established an executive operating rhythm aligning strategic planning, commercial forecasting and operational performance into one governance framework.
Our Methodology
This engagement followed our five-phase operating model framework — Discovery & Decision-Flow Mapping, Regional Capability Diagnostic, Operating Model Design, Governance & Rhythm Rollout, and Validation & Handover — applied across North America and Europe over 17 weeks.
Five named deliverables anchored the redesign:
- Decision-Flow Map — tracing how decisions actually travelled across regional and corporate leadership.
- Regional Capability Audit — identifying where operational excellence varied and best practices stayed informal.
- Scalable Operating Model Blueprint — redistributing decision authority to regional leadership under enterprise-wide standards.
- Executive Operating Rhythm — aligning strategic planning, commercial forecasting and operational performance into one cadence.
- Shared Standards Playbook — the replicable best practices rolled out across every market.
Each deliverable fed directly into which decisions moved to regional leadership and which stayed centralised, so every governance change traced back to a documented pattern in how decisions actually flowed, not an assumption about hierarchy.
What Changed in the First 12 Months
Within months of implementation:
- Duplicated operational activities were reduced by approximately 38% as successful practices were documented and shared instead of reinvented regionally.
- Executive decision-making accelerated by roughly 27% across regional and corporate leadership teams.
- Cross-functional collaboration improved as governance became transparent and consistent across international operations.
- Leadership gained greater visibility into emerging operational risks before they affected customer delivery.
- Expansion no longer created proportional increases in organisational complexity.
The business stopped adapting to growth. It became prepared for it.
Our Perspective
Many organisations believe they need a new strategy when growth begins to slow.
In reality, they often need a new operating model. Growth should increase opportunity — not organisational friction.
That reallocation discipline is now a defining shift across organisations broadly: McKinsey’s State of Organizations 2026 research points to focusing on the core — selecting a few strategic priorities, building the governance and capability to execute them, and dynamically reallocating budget and talent to fuel them — as one of the most significant shifts transforming organisations today, which is exactly what this operating model redesign put into practice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did tripling revenue in five years create a problem instead of being a pure success story?
The business had opened new distribution centres and strengthened international partnerships fast enough that its operating model never caught up. Projects moved more slowly, approvals needed multiple levels of management, and regional teams kept solving identical problems in different ways — friction that grew proportionally with every new market.
Why redesign the operating model instead of just adding more management layers?
Additional management layers would have added more approval steps to a system that was already too centralised for its scale. The actual issue was that decision-making authority hadn’t moved to regional leadership as the business expanded — adding more central oversight would have made that worse, not better.
How did redistributing decision authority to regional teams work without losing enterprise-wide consistency?
Authority moved to regional leadership through clearly defined governance structures and shared operational standards, so local teams could respond faster while still working from the same enterprise-wide playbook — rather than each region developing its own informal approach, as had been happening before.
What was the measurable outcome of the operating model redesign?
Within months: duplicated operational activities fell by approximately 38%, and executive decision-making accelerated by roughly 27% across both regional and corporate leadership teams.
What methodology did we use to redesign the operating model across North America and Europe?
We applied a five-phase operating model framework — Discovery & Decision-Flow Mapping, Regional Capability Diagnostic, Operating Model Design, Governance & Rhythm Rollout, and Validation & Handover — across commercial, operational and support teams in both regions over 17 weeks.
Work With an Operating Model Strategy Consultant
Scaling a business isn’t simply about entering new markets or hiring more people. It’s about building an organisation capable of supporting the future you’re creating.
