Business-Unit Interface Redesign Director

The mandate

Three successful divisions independently sell controllers, drives, software and lifecycle service into the same global accounts. Their autonomy accelerates component decisions but creates competing account ownership, incompatible solution assumptions, duplicated engineering and gaps at system acceptance. A major customer has challenged the group to name one accountable interface after a commissioning dispute passed between units for eleven weeks.

The deliverable is a business-unit interface design consisting of customer-outcome maps, transaction catalogue, accountability rules, commercial attribution principles, engineering design-authority gates, service handoffs, dispute clocks and a controlled pilot charter. It must preserve useful divisional autonomy while defining the few enterprise moments where one decision, one representation or one integration owner is mandatory. Legal-entity consolidation is not presumed.

Five milestones follow the five-month engagement: baseline two disputed accounts in month one; agree interface design principles in month two; publish the target transaction and decision map in month three; run a live bid and service pilot in month four; submit the evidence-backed design and rollout choices in month five. Each milestone carries a named artefact and invoice.

Acceptance requires the three division presidents and group operating officer to trace twelve high-friction transactions through the proposed model, resolve one unseen accountability collision and sign the pilot evidence. The customer need not endorse the organisation chart, but its authorised account lead must confirm that representation, escalation and system-acceptance ownership are unambiguous. Unresolved economic attribution is recorded as a board choice, not buried in facilitation notes.

The client supplies contracts, account plans, engineering responsibility matrices, service cases, cost attribution, incentives, dispute logs and access to two customer account teams by day five. The work excludes divisional restructuring, transfer pricing, ERP integration, product architecture, sales-force redesign, contract renegotiation and implementation beyond the controlled pilot. Management decides and executes any broader rollout.

Why this is external work

Every division benefits from the interfaces it currently controls and bears costs when enterprise work is reassigned, making internal design politically constrained. The group needs a neutral practitioner who understands engineered-solution accountability rather than a generic organisation chart. A fixed engagement can make trade-offs explicit before another customer dispute hardens positions.

What you will own

• Trace twelve cross-unit transactions from customer request through commercial promise, engineering authority, delivery, acceptance and support.
• Identify duplicated decisions, orphaned outcomes, conflicting incentives, missing evidence and escalation loops across the three divisions.
• Design accountability rules specifying when divisional autonomy yields to a named enterprise representation or integration owner.
• Frame commercial attribution principles without calculating transfer prices or determining legal-entity profit allocation.
• Test the model through one live bid and one service exception with deliberately introduced interface ambiguity.
• Assemble the transaction catalogue, customer-outcome maps, decision gates, dispute clocks and controlled rollout charter.
• Resolve consolidated sponsor variances and document any remaining economic choice for explicit group-level decision.

Candidate qualifications

• Redesigned interfaces among autonomous industrial business units serving the same complex multinational customer accounts.
• Understands engineered-system bids, design authority, configuration ownership, commissioning acceptance and lifecycle service handoffs.
• Preserved entrepreneurial divisional accountability while creating enterprise ownership at genuinely indivisible customer moments.
• Has navigated attribution and incentive conflict without allowing transfer-pricing debates to consume operating-model design.
• Ran live pilots where account, engineering and service leaders had to use new decision rules under pressure.
• Delivered a decision-ready target model with explicit unresolved choices rather than a consensus-heavy responsibility matrix.

Non-negotiables

• Can facilitate all five interface labs and observe both named customer-account processes within the five-month schedule.
• Brings industrial engineered-solution experience; generic organisation design or shared-services work alone will not qualify.
• Will preserve legal, tax, product and contractual decision boundaries while exposing operating-accountability gaps.
• Accepts that restructuring, transfer pricing, ERP, incentive redesign and enterprise implementation remain client responsibilities.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe an enterprise customer outcome that failed between otherwise successful autonomous business units.
2. 49 words maximum. How would you distinguish a necessary enterprise interface from avoidable centralisation?
3. 49 words maximum. Which client artefacts reveal whether commercial attribution is driving an accountability dispute?