Plan-to-Actual Recovery Senior Director

The mandate

An interim Senior Director is needed to restore a reliable plan-to-actual explanation after inconsistent baseline versions and movement categories weakened accountability. Reported actuals are not the problem; the difficulty lies in showing which plan premise changed, when it changed, who acted and whether that response remains visible in the current outlook. Start is required within three weeks.

The six-month recovery will lock an authoritative baseline, rebuild bridge logic and connect variance analysis to decisions rather than commentary volume. It must separate accounting presentation changes from economic movement and ensure that forecast updates do not overwrite the history needed to evaluate planning quality.

Temporary authority includes selecting baseline versions, approving bridge definitions, requiring recast submissions and escalating unexplained balances. Accounting policy, posting decisions, performance consequences and target reset sit outside scope. The appointee may refer matters to their owners but cannot resolve them by assuming those authorities.

The successor should be named by week eight and lead the last two closes plus the final forecast bridge. Exit requires reproducible reconciliation, a closed legacy-exception plan and executive acceptance that remaining movements represent genuine judgement rather than process failure.

What you will own

• Identify and freeze the authoritative plan baseline, preserving approved changes in a separate version-and-decision register.
• Reconcile plan, actual and latest outlook across scope, rate, accounting, timing and economic movement without residual balancing lines.
• Standardise variance categories and establish tests preventing contributors from moving unfavorable items into uninformative labels.
• Link material variances to original assumptions, accountable owners, corrective decisions and expected recovery timing.
• Create a bridge library for revenue, margin, operating cost, working capital and cash that retains integrated consistency.
• Establish close-plus-five performance reviews with pre-read controls, unresolved-item escalation and recorded action follow-through.
• Train finance partners to distinguish explanation, accountability, forecast consequence and management response in concise narratives.
• Certify a permanent owner after two closes and one outlook bridge are completed without interim correction.

Candidate qualifications

• Fourteen or more years in FP&A, management reporting or close-facing performance roles, including rapid baseline-recovery work.
• Evidence of resolving competing plan versions and establishing a controlled change history accepted by accounting and planning leaders.
• Strong integrated variance-analysis skill across volume, price, mix, scope, rate, timing, accounting and productivity dimensions.
• A case where you exposed an apparently economic variance as a classification or baseline problem and prevented a wrong action.
• Experience chairing compressed performance cycles and holding senior contributors to evidence without delaying executive decisions.
• Clear understanding of boundaries between FP&A explanation and accounting-policy or posting authority.
• Demonstrated successor certification using live-cycle performance rather than document completion alone.

Working terms and boundaries

• This is a six-month, five-day-week interim assignment; a two-month extension is available only for an unpassed owner acceptance test.
• Baseline, bridge and release controls are included, while ledger correction, accounting policy and target-setting decisions are excluded.
• Hybrid attendance is weighted toward close, forecast release and successor-led cycles, with remote work arranged outside those windows.
• The interim leader must preserve original plan history and cannot improve apparent accuracy through retrospective baseline alteration.
• Completion requires a single controlled baseline, integrated bridges, closed material exceptions and successful permanent-owner operation.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 10 October 2026. Mandate reference FPA-INT-2026-WAW-22.