How to jumpstart a stalled process

GREAT strategy with poor execution often leads nowhere. A company might lack certain key capabilities to execute the strategy. A constant swirl of revision may hold back decision making. Product or geographic complexity may have outrun the organisation's ability to keep pace.

So how do you jumpstart stalled execution? When there's a persistent gap between strategy and execution, the culprit is usually an obsolete or misaligned operating model. Individual changes such as adjusting spans and layers may help, but an integrated solution will provide deep-seated, enduring change.

Redesigning the operating model may be one of the smartest investments an executive can make. Our analysis of companies in eight industries and 21 countries finds that companies with top-quartile operating model indicators - those with clear, robust operating models - have five-year compound average revenue growth that is 120 basis points faster and operating margins that are 260 basis points higher than for those in the bottom quartile.