The Method Target Operating Model

The way your business actually runs – redesigned agent-native.

Your operating model is the way the business actually runs – who does what, who decides, how the work moves. We rebuild it with agents as the substrate: humans where judgement matters, agents where volume and repetition do. One working model your executives and your agents both run on.

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§ 01 · An example operating model 01 / 07
Example target operating model · Institutional financial services

An example operating model, redesigned around agents.

An illustrative operating model – an institutional bank, eighteen functions, three levels of AI involvement. The same method holds in any industry – what changes is the content, not the frame.

Eighteen operating functions scattered across a wide canvas. Front-office functions (Sales, Trading, Client Services, Wealth Management, Investment Advisory) sit loosely upper-left. Middle-office functions (Risk Management, Compliance, Treasury, Operations, Settlement, Collateral) cluster centrally. Back-office functions (Finance, Regulatory Reporting, Audit, HR) sit lower-right and along the right edge. Cross-cutting platform functions (IT, Market Data, Data) anchor at strategic positions, with Data at the centre as the substrate every agent reads from. Undirected hairline edges connect functions that share day-to-day working relationships. AI participates at three levels: plain nodes are human-led; nodes with a hollow violet ring are AI-assisted; nodes with a solid violet pip are agentic. Sales Inv. Advisory Trading Client Services Wealth Mgmt Risk Mgmt Compliance Treasury Collateral Operations Settlement Finance Reg. Reporting Audit HR IT Market Data Data
Human-led
AI-assisted
Agentic
Signal
Zone · 01 Front office
Zone · 02 Middle office
Zone · 03 Back office
Zone · 04 Foundations & Platform
Hover a function to inspect

Eighteen functions; three states of AI participation. Hover any node to see how AI participates today – human-led, AI-assisted, or agentic.

§ 02 · An operating model, redesigned 02 / 07
An operating model, redesigned · Illustrative & anonymized

Assess and Design are two snapshots of one canvas.

One canvas, two states. Assess maps how the business runs today; Design draws the target. Below is a target, drawn from a real engagement and fully de-identified.

The business, in one line

A B2B platform business – a two-sided network that sits between the parties it connects, and moves the orders, catalogues, and money between them.

The framework · Operating Model Canvas

Eleven dimensions hold the whole business in view – nothing important left implicit.

AStrategy
01
Positioning Who we serve, and the promise we make to both sides of the network.
02
Strategy & scope Which markets and which value flows we own – and which we deliberately do not.
BOperating core
03
Processes The end-to-end value flows that turn a supplier’s catalogue into a settled order.
04
Organisation The teams, the roles, and who is accountable for each flow.
05
Information & Data The catalogue, order, and ledger data every agent and team reads from – the substrate.
06
Technology The platform, the integrations, and the agent fleet that runs the flows.
CContext & guardrails
07
Locations & legal entities Where the work sits and which entity carries it.
08
Suppliers & sourcing Platforms, payment rails, logistics partners we depend on.
09
Management & governance How decisions get made, escalated, reviewed – named decision rights.
10
Risk concentration Where a single failure would hurt most – and how it is contained.
11
Regulatory & trust posture Continuous surveillance that keeps the network honest and auditable.
The centre of the model

One flow, one owner, one headline metric.

Every value flow has one accountable owner, one number that says whether it is healthy, and an automation profile – the same three states as the diagram: agentic, AI-assisted, or human-led.

Illustrative B2B platform business – each value flow with its accountable owner, headline metric, and automation profile.

Value flows for an illustrative B2B platform business: each with its accountable owner, headline metric, and automation profile.
Value flow Accountable owner Headline metric Automation profile
Head of Marketplace Operations Orders routed straight-through, % Agentic
Head of Supply Time to first live order AI-assisted
Head of Catalogue Listings complete & accurate, % Agentic
Commercial Director Margin held vs. target AI-assisted
Financial Controller Auto-reconciled on first pass, % Agentic
Head of Trust & Service Time to fair resolution Human-led
Agentic
OwnerHead of Marketplace Operations
MetricOrders routed straight-through, %
AI-assisted
OwnerHead of Supply
MetricTime to first live order
Agentic
OwnerHead of Catalogue
MetricListings complete & accurate, %
AI-assisted
OwnerCommercial Director
MetricMargin held vs. target
Agentic
OwnerFinancial Controller
MetricAuto-reconciled on first pass, %
Human-led
OwnerHead of Trust & Service
MetricTime to fair resolution
Decision rights

Every consequential call has a named owner. Agents act inside those rights – never beyond them.

What you receive

Six deliverables – from a current-state map to a function-by-function rollout.

§ 03 · Functions, not guesswork 03 / 07

Functions, not guesswork.

What should be deterministic, we treat deterministically. We use agents as functions – precise role, precise input, expected output – placed where they add value. Where the work calls for fit-for-purpose systems, we build them. Nothing is handed to AI and left to chance.

§ 04 · Agent-Native Operations 04 / 07

The business that runs itself, supervised.

An operating layer that turns a function chart into a working fleet of agents. Roles, decision rights, handoffs, audit trails – explicit, visible, editable by the people who own them. Work that was scattered across standing meetings and inboxes now lives on one surface.

Each agent has a precise role and scope: some decide and act, some prepare work for humans, some monitor and escalate. The view below is stylised – your real surface is built around the function chart you operate today.

And if sovereignty matters, the whole layer can run inside your perimeter – on your premises, on a model you own, with nothing leaving the jurisdiction. Sovereign LLM →

Stylised view. Your real surface is built for your operating model.

§ 05 · Integrations 05 / 07

Wherever the work happens.

Agents that meet your team in Slack and Teams. Workflows that run inside your AWS, GCP, Azure, or sovereign environment. Connectors to the systems of record you already operate. The fleet lives where the work lives.

Slack
Teams
AWS
GCP
Azure
Notion
GitHub
Linear
Jira
Salesforce
Snowflake
Custom REST
§ 06 · Bespoke by default 06 / 07

A proven method. A one-of-one result.

We work from a real methodology – playbooks, templates, and a standard of rigour carried from institutional-scale systems in regulated environments. None of it is recycled at you. The method is applied fresh to your business, so the agents and workflows we ship are shaped to how you actually operate. Disciplined process; bespoke outcome.

§ 07 · Get in touch 07 / 07

Designed around agents. Delivered for your business.

We start from how the business runs today and redraw it, function by function – around what agents now do well, and what your people should still own.

Get in touch