When your operating model breaks, everything breaks

Crisis doesn’t reveal character—it exposes flaws in your operating model. The most spectacular business meltdowns trace back to the same root cause: a company running on systems that no longer match its reality.

Why do even brilliant teams suddenly lose their ability to execute? Because their interconnected machinery—the operating model—grows tangled and inefficient as they scale. What worked at €10M breaks at €100M.

What is an operating model?
In digital commerce, it’s the blueprint that connects strategy, people, processes, technology, and data into a system that delivers value to customers. It determines how efficiently digital traffic converts into revenue and whether a company can scale profitably.

Three textbook failures—and how they refocused:

• Glossier built a custom tech platform that faced mounting technical debt and draining resources. Fix: Ditching custom platform, simplifying tech stack, and re-centering on core business rather than internal tech development. Result: 73% YoY sales growth.

• Peloton bloated its supply chain for infinite pandemic demand, misjudging long-term market realities. Fix: aggressively simplifying operations & logistics, and outsourcing manufacturing. Result: A more agile supply chain and $800M in annual efficiency gains.

• Rent the Runway overcomplicated fulfillment network, which collapsed under its own weight, forcing them to halt new sign-ups for weeks. Fix: refocusing on thecore subscription business, streamlining logistics and eliminating non-essential retail operations. Result: A more reliable fulfillment model (nevertheless, the brand is nearing bankruptcy still…)

The lesson: diagnose before you scale.

Each of these companies wasn’t just ‘too big’—they became too complex in the wrong ways. A well-designed operating model ensures you scale the right things and provides the framework to manage complexity before it becomes unmanageable: tech, team structure, and operations align with the business, so companies avoid overhiring, overbuilding, and inventing Rube Goldberg machines instead of scalable systems.

Your Operating Model blueprint: The seven interconnected components that turn strategy into results and prevent complexity from derailing growth.

So, don’t wait for a breakdown—instead, constantly ask:

• Is our operating model designed for our current business complexity, not just our revenue size?

• Do we have full clarity and a long-term vision of how technology supports our business goals?

• Have we defined how strategy, people, processes, technology, and data connect to deliver customer value?

Otherwise, it might be time to get back to the whiteboard.

How we can help↴

Conway & Co provides independent advice on improving your operating model across processes, technology, and people to get your company fit for growth.

Book a discovery call

AI for revenue generation, cost reduction, and customer retention

Dive in

Tools & Tactics

We select helpful tools and useful new ways of working. Find a signal in the noise of software.

01 Sierra AI

A conversational AI platform designed to transform customer service. It helps businesses deploy AI agents that provide customer support, enhance brand interaction, and streamline operations.

02 Daash

An AI-powered intelligence platform that provides beauty, wellness, and personal care brands competitive insights about prices, sales, and velocity estimates.

03 Outset

An AI-moderated research platform that combines the scale of surveys with the depth of interviews. It allows users to conduct and synthesize hundreds of video, audio, and text interviews simultaneously, providing rich insights and a deeper understanding of participants' responses.

Trends & Strategy

Curated content from the information overload we call the Internet.
Insights and inspiration on business, e-commerce, and investing.

AI Agents Are Changing How People Shop. Here’s What That Means for Brands.

10 min read

By Harvard Business Review

“Enough consumers are skipping Google and searching using ChatGPT, an AI agent that interprets questions and synthesizes search results, that some experts estimate it could replace Google in four years.”
Full article

Why businesses employ process mining for CX data analysis

By CX Dive

15 min read

“Process mining uses specialized software that collects data from a range of business systems — such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and ticketing systems — to map workflows and identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies.”
Full article

Bol earns more than all its partner sellers

10 min read

By ecommercenews.com

“Dutch online marketplace Bol has had a good year: sales increased 8.7%, reaching 3.1 billion euros. It also earned more from its own platform sales than all sales partners together, figures show.”
Full article

Updates on Conway Talent Network

Conway Talent Network is a curated list of e-commerce job opportunities for product, tech, data, and marketing professionals at the top consumer & retail brands. Expect roles like:

• Head of E-commerce at Ekster

• Digital experience lead at Nike

• Product Owner at De Bijenkorf

• Retail Operations Manager at Ace & Tate

Discover more

Visually appealing

London's cult fashion store LN-CC has reopened in Dalston with a striking redesign, featuring six distinctively themed rooms. The new layout includes the orange 'Tunnel' entrance with select apparel and 'L8TE,' the in-house club space for events.