TMC Weekly – Issue #2 – The Management Consultant

TMC Weekly – Issue #2

Insights, lessons, and leadership from The Management Consultant
Issue #2 — 6 July 2025

Business & Technology Insight

From Silos to Systems Thinking: Why Operating Models Fail Before They Begin

In utilities, telecoms, and healthcare, most “transformations” stumble not in delivery — but in design. Teams draw target operating models in isolation, then wonder why the reality doesn’t match the blueprint.

The fix? Connected design thinking. When ops, tech, and customer experience teams map processes together, bottlenecks show up early. I’ve seen it in water retail: aligning billing and market ops at the start saved months later in build.

💡 If your TOM doesn’t include how decisions flow between teams, it’s just a diagram — not a design.

3 Things I’ve Learnt This Week

1. People buy clarity, not complexity. Stakeholders commit faster to plans they can understand.
2. One good metric beats ten dashboards. Pick a single north star and stick to it.
3. Time spent on structure isn’t wasted. A clean framework turns chaos into momentum.

Something Personal

This week marked 100 days until The Cooper Ball 2025. Watching early ticket sales roll in reminded me that community events thrive on small, consistent effort — not last-minute panic.

Tool of the Week

Lucid Chart – My go-to for mapping service blueprints and TOM drafts collaboratively.

🟡 Tip: Create a “single source” canvas for each programme — not multiple disconnected diagrams.

This Week's Challenge

What’s one recurring decision in your business that no one seems to own? Map it. Who should?

Quote of the Week

“The system you have is perfectly designed to get the results you’re getting.” — W. Edwards Deming