What is a company operating model?

A company operating model is the framework that describes how a company creates and delivers value. The Hillspeed Company Model maps nine leverage points across Leadership, Market, and Business, and connects them to measurable biomarkers so founders can see where force is travelling and where to pull.

What is a startup operating model?

A startup operating model governs how a startup makes decisions, allocates resources, and competes in market. The Company Model provides a specific architecture: three pillars (Leadership, Market, Business), nine levers, six biomarkers, and three decision indicators that identify which pillar is the constraint at any point in time.

What makes the Company Model different from an org chart?

An org chart shows who reports to whom. The Company Model shows how the company actually works — nine leverage points where decisions create movement, six biomarkers that measure that movement, and the schema that governs how the founder competes inside the model.

Frameworks

Company Model Framework

A framework for objectively discussing the interconnected nature of company design — allowing us to build the model as one holistic growth engine.

Hillspeed Performance Stack Frameworks

Step 1: Company Model Framework
Step 2: Proprietary Code Model
Step 3: Leadership OS
Step 4: Level 10 Coaching

Growth pillars

Every company is made up of 3 independent pillars. Your Business, the Market, and your Leadership. Three tightly integrated but separate variables in your growth model. The Market is what drives growth in a Company. The Business is what enables growth. Leadership is the foundation for all.

Model indicators

Three indicators sit at the centre of your model — Trajectory, Acceleration, and Resilience. They are your performance compass. The orientation for evaluating decisions against the type of performance you want to drive.

Performance levers

All three company growth pillars have three leverage points each, nine in total. These are the aspects of your model where decisions create fundamental performance improvement or decay.

Field of play

Every company is it's own sport — but sports require white lines and rules that allow people to understand how competition occurs. This field of play frame draws out the six biomarkers that define your company model and tell us exactly how your Business competes for your Market. This is a standardised way of looking at the unique structure of your game.

Game level standards

Scoreboards in business are used incorrectly. Most people see them as a tool to understand how far off an objective they are — when what you really need is to understand what level of the game you are playing at. Game level standards force you to confront your objective present day reality, before making decisions against it.

Championship strategy

In sport there is a championship to be won at every level, and the company model creates an objective reality for you to articulate what defines your next level of the game. We typically break this conversation down into 4 stages of performance — Foundation, Good, Great, and Exceptional. Each stage is anchored to your impact in market, Game Metric, not revenue. This is what makes a championship strategy significantly more effective for reverse engineering what's required to get to the next level of the game.

Path of growth

We reverse engineer your championship objective back to a specific path of growth. Just like athletes in sport, a Company Model put attention on your approach to performance in stages too, sequencing the specific changes required in your business to step into your market potential. Base camps up the mountain are what bring objective focus to the Leadership decision engine.