Corporate-Centre Intervention Charter Director

The mandate

The group alternates between central campaigns and business-unit autonomy without a stable reason for either. Group functions mandate tools, suppliers and policies in some areas, offer optional expertise in others, and intervene informally when a chief executive loses confidence. Business units resist even legitimate controls because they cannot predict the boundary. The defined problem is to specify the corporate centre’s intervention logic, services and exit conditions without conducting a wholesale organisation redesign.

The primary deliverable is a corporate-centre intervention charter covering 30 recurring decisions across performance, capital, people, digital, procurement, risk, sustainability and strategy. It will define mandatory control, reserved decision, triggered intervention, elective service and business-unit autonomy; each entry names evidence, threshold, authority, service commitment, cost visibility and exit condition. Six case records, an escalation map, service catalogue and transition backlog are included; restructuring and headcount execution are excluded.

Milestone one, at week three, delivers current-state decision evidence and six contested cases. Milestone two, at week seven, provides design principles and a draft classification for all 30 decisions. Milestone three, at week twelve, stress-tests the charter through three healthy and three distressed unit scenarios. Milestone four, at week sixteen, agrees service commitments and cost transparency. Milestone five, at month five, submits the accepted charter, governance method and 120-day adoption plan.

Acceptance requires all twelve business-unit chiefs and group-function leaders to classify the six cases consistently, identify the same decision owner, and state what triggers and ends centre intervention. Mandatory controls must remain independent of optional services, and central cost must be visible without creating internal transfer-price design. The governance committee will sign when two simulated escalations operate within the charter and every disputed entry has an accountable board disposition.

The client will provide authority schedules, policies, service catalogues, management charges, intervention histories, business-unit strategies, performance and risk triggers, committee terms and access to all unit chiefs. It will appoint a Group COO sponsor and eight-person design team, secure scenario attendance, and decide policy choices within four business days. Management retains restructuring, appointment, capital, control, service-pricing and all live intervention decisions.

Why this is external work

Central functions naturally argue for consistency and business units naturally defend proximity to customers, while prior design efforts negotiated a compromise rather than examining actual cases. A neutral director can distinguish fiduciary control, enterprise advantage and corporate habit. Independence also lets unit chiefs describe informal intervention without asking one internal function to adjudicate its own reach.

What you will own

• Reconstruct 30 recurring decisions from formal authority, recent cases, actual intervention behaviour and business-unit consequence.
• Classify mandatory control, reserved decision, triggered intervention, elective service and autonomy through explicit design tests.
• Define evidence, threshold, decision owner, service commitment, cost visibility and exit condition for every charter entry.
• Work six contested cases spanning healthy, underperforming and crisis conditions without treating distress as permanent centralisation.
• Separate group control obligations from services whose value, demand and performance a business unit may legitimately challenge.
• Run two simulated escalations that expose shadow authority, duplicated approval, absent service commitment and unclear withdrawal.
• Deliver the accepted charter, casebook, service catalogue, governance method and funded 120-day adoption backlog.

Candidate qualifications

• Designed corporate-centre and business-unit governance for a diversified global group with materially different operating models.
• Has distinguished fiduciary control, enterprise scale advantage, triggered intervention, optional service and local autonomy in practice.
• Can analyse actual decisions rather than rely on organisation charts, generic spans or negotiated RACI workshops.
• Recovered a central intervention that persisted after its triggering condition ended and returned ownership responsibly.
• Worked with business CEOs and functional chiefs through contested authority without turning design into headcount arbitration.
• Delivered a charter adopted by internal governance rather than requiring the external designer to resolve every later case.

Non-negotiables

• Can lead all twelve business-unit chief interviews and both executive simulations within five months.
• Will not bundle restructuring, shared-services outsourcing, executive search or technology implementation into the work.
• Accepts that board and management retain all live control, intervention, capital, service-pricing and appointment decisions.
• Brings diversified-group decision evidence; organisation-chart design or cost benchmarking alone is insufficient.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a corporate intervention you ended after its trigger passed, despite central resistance.
2. 49 words maximum. How would you distinguish mandatory group control from a central service a business may decline?
3. 49 words maximum. Which six case types would you use to stress-test a corporate-centre charter?