Long-Range Planning Operating Model Director

The mandate

The assignment will create a repeatable long-range planning operating model that connects strategic choices to financial consequences without turning a multi-year view into an extended annual budget. Scope is deliberately bounded: design the decision process, horizon conventions, scenario architecture, artifacts, roles and rehearsal needed for the organisation's next long-range cycle.

Seven deliverables anchor the work: decision inventory, horizon and assumption policy, scenario framework, integrated financial specification, governance map, complete rehearsal pack and owner transfer dossier. The consultant must distinguish choices requiring commitment now from options that should remain open, and show how the distinction appears in financial outputs.

Milestones occur at months one, two, four, five, seven, nine and ten. The Steering Group Chair accepts the first three; the CFO delegate accepts the integrated specification and rehearsal; the joint steering group accepts governance and transfer. Artifacts pass only when material assumptions trace to owners and the rehearsal produces reconcilable statements and recorded choices.

Required inputs are the approved strategic questions, current planning policies, controlled historical financials, named decision owners, existing commitment schedules and access to designated governance forums. The consultant is not responsible for creating strategy where no approved choice exists. Missing decisions will appear as explicit unresolved dependencies, not silently filled assumptions.

What you will own

• Catalogue long-range decisions by commitment date, reversibility, financial exposure, information need and accountable forum.
• Set horizon conventions that separate committed, expected, contingent and aspirational cases and prevent ambition from entering the base plan by default.
• Design three coherent scenarios with linked drivers, external premises, management responses and trigger indicators.
• Specify integrated income, cash, balance-sheet and return outputs, including reconciliation to the medium-term forecast and current commitments.
• Create governance paths for assumption approval, dissent, scenario refresh, option retirement and re-entry into the annual cycle.
• Conduct an end-to-end rehearsal using approved inputs, record defects and retest every critical weakness before acceptance.
• Produce executive materials that show option value, capacity constraints, funding implications and decision lead time without overwhelming detail.
• Transfer administration, challenge and model stewardship to named internal owners through observed practice and competency sign-off.

Candidate qualifications

• Sixteen or more years in long-range FP&A, strategic finance or corporate planning, including at least three operating-model commissions.
• A portfolio demonstrating how multi-year strategy became integrated financial choices without collapsing into annual-budget detail.
• Strong knowledge of scenario linkage, option value, terminal assumptions, capital capacity, statement integration and strategic risk representation.
• Evidence of differentiating approved strategy, planning assumption and management aspiration in contested executive settings.
• Experience setting milestone acceptance around traceability, reconciliation and decision use rather than completion of presentation materials.
• Remote facilitation strength across senior owners, paired with willingness to travel to Amsterdam for discovery, rehearsal and final transfer.
• Documented transfer methods showing internal owners independently running governance and model refresh before project closure.

Working terms and boundaries

• The ten-month commission is delivered at three days a week, with scheduled Amsterdam travel aligned to seven formal milestones.
• Work covers operating-model design and rehearsal; strategic choice formulation, production tooling, implementation rollout and assurance opinions are outside scope.
• The consultant can convene and document decisions but cannot approve strategy, planning policy or capital commitments.
• Approved questions, controlled financials, named owners and commitment schedules are client-supplied dependencies governed through a live decision-and-input register.
• Final acceptance requires a reconciled rehearsal, closed critical defects, signed ownership and independent operation of one scenario refresh by the internal team.

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 FPA-CON-2026-AMS-12.