Principal Capability Architecture Director — Social-Enterprise Manager Practice

The mandate

Programme managers in a social enterprise receive general leadership training but lack a shared method for judging the practice required in their field responsibilities. Donor deadlines, uneven volunteer capacity and staff development create recurring dilemmas that a broad course catalogue does not resolve. The principal capability architecture director will design a manager-practice framework, coaching exercises and internal assessment guide. This four-month project starts on 26 October 2026 and closes through tested internal use, not improved programme outcomes or a new executive people appointment.

The 30 November 2026 milestone delivers a field-dilemma inventory and validated account of manager decisions. By 15 January 2027, the second milestone supplies the observable-practice framework, coached exercises and assessment examples. Final delivery on 26 February 2027 consists of a manager-learning pilot, assessor calibration and transfer of the maintained guide. The design must distinguish delegation, constructive feedback and escalation to qualified owners. A manager who confidently answers a scenario is not necessarily ready to decide a safeguarding or professional matter outside their authority.

The method starts with decisions people actually face, rather than a generic list of desirable leadership traits. A donor request may conflict with available supervision; a volunteer may need support before taking an unfamiliar task; a staff member may interpret feedback as a change in role entitlement. Programme and people owners provide approved conditions. You translate them into observable manager behaviour and coaching practice, preserving uncertainty where the enterprise has not yet agreed a policy or professional response. The framework must not make its author the hidden adjudicator of live field decisions.

The programme operations chief and people development lead jointly accept the three stages. The dilemma inventory must trace selected cases to reviewed field evidence. Design tests use unseen variations to distinguish sound delegation, incomplete support and necessary specialist referral. Final acceptance requires internal coaches to run two exercises and assessors to explain consistent ratings using the guide, with disagreements resolved through the maintained method rather than consultant rulings. Payment follows accepted artifacts at 25%, 35% and 40%. Donor satisfaction, participant employment outcomes and safeguarding-case resolution are excluded from commercial acceptance.

Three days each week cover Bengaluru-led analysis, field observation and agreed workshops. The sponsor supplies permitted manager cases, existing people policies and eight available contributors. Organisation restructuring, individual employment decisions and professional safeguarding assessment are outside scope. Additional programme types or management populations need an agreed fee and schedule amendment. The deliverable should enable practical development conversations that managers and coaches can sustain, while leaving the enterprise's live operating and professional decisions with their properly authorised owners.

What you will own

• Reconstruct selected field-manager dilemmas with programme owners, identifying the actual decision, available evidence and authority boundary before those cases are turned into capability statements or teaching exercises.
• Define observable manager practice for delegation, feedback and escalation, distinguishing a development need from a policy condition or professional question that the capability framework cannot settle.
• Build coached exercises with realistic support and resource constraints, enabling managers to practise judgement rather than choose an obvious ideal answer detached from volunteer and field conditions.
• Construct assessment examples and rating rationales that retain evidence limitations, preventing confidence, articulate language or prior training attendance from being mistaken for demonstrated manager competence.
• Test the design through unseen dilemma variations with supplied contributors, documenting disagreements and revising practice indicators when they fail to distinguish safe delegation from unsupported task transfer.
• Run the learning pilot and assessor calibration through internal coaches, requiring them to explain two exercised decisions and consistent ratings without relying on the principal to adjudicate each case.
• Transfer the guide with update ownership and scope boundaries, ensuring changes in programme conditions trigger reviewed adaptation while live employment and professional decisions remain with authorised enterprise owners.

Candidate qualifications

• Evidence a competency or manager-development framework grounded in real work dilemmas. Describe an indicator you changed after observing how managers used it, including the behaviour that the original wording failed to distinguish. Your personal contribution must show architecture, coaching and assessment judgement rather than selection of a ready-made leadership course or collection of participant feedback after delivery.
• Bring 28+ years across people leadership, capability transformation, coaching or related professional development, with senior VP-equivalent practice in services or a relevant social-enterprise setting. Strong structured change and cross-cultural experience should help you interpret different manager conditions. You must work respectfully with programme specialists and avoid treating general people-development expertise as authority for safeguarding, employment law or another professional decision.
• Demonstrate internal-coach and assessor calibration using observable evidence. Explain an exercise where confident presentation obscured weak judgement, how you corrected the rating method and what remained uncertain. The role needs fair practical assessment and teachable reasoning, not a universal personality score or a framework that labels every manager ready because they attended a development programme.
• Set aside three weekly working days for the four-month project, including agreed field sessions. Show an earlier method transfer in which internal coaches could run unfamiliar cases and maintain the guide. Careful handling of staff and beneficiary information, written scope control and explicit acceptance are required to leave usable capability architecture without creating a continuing external dependency for ordinary manager development.

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 8 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-CON-2026-IND-161.