migrate-a-global-operating-model

name	migrate-a-global-operating-model
category	start
description	Migrate a global operating model through decision rights, role and process design, legal and workforce duties, customer continuity, systems, phased transition, and stabilization evidence. Use when moving work between global, regional, country, shared-service, or outsourced structures.

migrate-a-global-operating-model

An organizational chart is not an operating model.

When to use

• Use for centralization, decentralization, shared services, regionalization, outsourcing, integration, or major restructuring.
• Obtain qualified employment, labor, works-council, tax, regulatory, privacy, security, accessibility, and country review.

Preconditions

• Establish executive, country, function, workforce, legal, finance, tax, privacy, security, customer, vendor, systems, and transition authority.
• Define strategy, countries, entities, populations, services, customers, risk, continuity, benefit, and stop thresholds.
• Separate confidential scenario design from required consultation, participation, notification, and fair process duties.

Procedure

Complete current and target operating model, legal, workforce, and customer controls, transition waves, and rollback and stabilization before declaring adoption.

1. Build a global operating-model register for services, outcomes, processes, decisions, roles, entities, countries, customers, systems, data, vendors, controls, cost, capacity, and owners.
2. Map current work as actually performed, including informal decisions, handoffs, exceptions, local obligations, peak demand, hidden labor, and workarounds.
3. Design target service boundaries, global standards, local variation, decision rights, accountability, interfaces, staffing, skills, capacity, locations, and performance.
4. Validate entity, worker, employment, consultation, union, works-council, immigration, tax, licensing, safety, regulatory, accessibility, language, privacy, residency, and security implications.
5. Assess people impact fairly, protect confidentiality, manage conflicts, support accessibility, and provide lawful consultation, selection, redeployment, transition, and appeal.
6. Map customer, partner, authority, contract, service-level, language, timezone, and relationship continuity.
7. Design system, identity, access, data, records, finance, procurement, vendor, reporting, knowledge, and support changes.
8. Establish a decision-rights and process contract with stable service IDs, input and output criteria, handoff states, one accountable owner, and local exception authority.
9. Baseline cost, capacity, quality, risk, service, employee, customer, and control measures with benefits and disbenefits.
10. Pilot representative services and countries without selecting only easy cases; simulate volume, absence, local exceptions, incidents, and month-end.
11. Transition in dependency-aware waves with dual support, knowledge transfer, access sequencing, communications, acceptance, stop rules, and rollback.
12. Maintain a per-work-item accountability and execution-authority ledger for open cases, payments, approvals, incidents, and customer changes: responsible legal entity, accountable officer, delegated processor, processing location, residency basis, approval limit, current owner, state, last action, cutover epoch, and receiving acknowledgment.
13. Stabilize service, control, customer, people, financial, and benefit outcomes; correct target design instead of forcing unsafe conformity.
14. Retire legacy roles, systems, vendors, access, meetings, and processes only after every residual obligation has a durable owner.

Failure plan

• If consultation or legal duties are incomplete, stop the affected country or workforce action.
• If the target cannot handle representative demand or local controls, keep that service on the governed current model.
• If handoff ownership is ambiguous, block transfer until one accountable service state is established.
• If benefits require hidden workload, service harm, or control erosion, restate the case and redesign.

Worked example

A multinational company is moving finance, support, procurement, technology operations, compliance, and customer administration from country teams into regional hubs and global shared services while entities, works councils, unions, languages, licenses, tax, data residency, vendors, systems, peak periods, and customer obligations differ. The program maps real work, defines global and local decision rights, consults lawfully, pilots representative services, reconciles open work at each handoff, and stabilizes outcomes before retiring legacy capacity.

Done

• A global operating-model register verifies services, processes, decisions, roles, entities, countries, customers, systems, controls, capacity, cost, and ownership
• A workforce, legal, customer, and service validation report proves consultation, roles, skills, local duties, accessibility, privacy, continuity, controls, benefits, and residual risks
• A transition, rollback, and stabilization report demonstrates representative pilots, handoff reconciliation, dual support, access, acceptance, stop rules, outcomes, and legacy retirement