Partner – Organisation and Leadership — Mobile And Fixed Network

The mandate

An integrated telecommunications provider wants to grow its enterprise business by combining mobile, fixed connectivity, managed network, security and collaboration services. The market proposition is credible, but the organisation still behaves as separate product and channel businesses. Account leaders can promise an integrated outcome without controlling solution design or delivery capacity; product teams optimise their own revenue; service leaders inherit complexity after contract signature. Senior forums resolve individual escalations but rarely correct the decision architecture that produced them.

An advisory partnership is appointing a Partner – Organisation and Leadership to lead the redesign from London. The partner will work with the group chief executive, enterprise leadership and functional executives to create clear accountability from opportunity selection through service operation. They will address roles, decision rights, forums, incentives, leadership capability and succession while preserving the technical authority needed to protect the network and customer.

This is not a commission to redraw boxes around existing behaviour. The client needs an organisation capable of choosing where converged propositions create value, pricing the full delivery obligation and saying no before customisation becomes irreversible. The partner must connect structural recommendations to live commercial decisions and prove that the model can operate under deadline pressure.

Scope and operating context

The hybrid role is anchored in London and influences approximately 1,500 employees and material partners across the United Kingdom and a wider international region. The client perimeter spans enterprise sales, solutions, product, network engineering, digital services, bid management, commercial finance, delivery, service assurance and customer success. The engagement team will combine organisation design, leadership assessment, workforce, incentives, telecommunications and implementation expertise.

Enterprise segments require different coverage and governance. Large multinational accounts may justify dedicated orchestration and bespoke architecture; mid-market customers need speed, standardisation and a channel model; public and regulated clients impose assurance and procurement obligations. A single account structure has created expensive coverage in some segments and insufficient authority in others.

Leadership history complicates the work. Some executives own strong product franchises and fear that convergence will obscure economics or weaken control. Account teams believe functional gates slow growth. Delivery leaders see commitments that were never costed. The partner must distinguish legitimate control from organisational defence and create a design in which disagreement reaches the right decision owner before the bid is fixed.

First-year agenda

The first ten weeks will diagnose how work actually moves. The partner's team will trace a representative set of opportunities, renewals, implementations and service escalations from origin to outcome. They will record decisions, hand-offs, elapsed time, rework, approval basis, margin movement and customer consequence. Interviews and leadership assessment will test whether formal accountability matches influence, information and capability.

The diagnostic will identify a small number of organisational fractures rather than catalogue every complaint. These may include unclear ownership of multi-product account economics, duplicated solution approval, product incentives that encourage attachment regardless of value, weak delivery voice during bids or customer-success roles without authority to prevent recurrence. Each finding must be supported by case evidence and linked to an economic or service consequence.

The partner will then define the target operating principles. Segment coverage, account leadership, solution authority, product participation, delivery acceptance and in-life ownership will be explicit. Decision rights will distinguish standard offers from genuine exceptions and separate technical risk acceptance from commercial approval. Forums will exist only where a recurring cross-enterprise choice cannot be assigned to one accountable role.

Live commercial cases will serve as design laboratories. Several material pursuits or renewals will operate under the proposed model, with the partner observing where authority, information or capability still fails. The team will measure decision time, solution reuse, margin confidence, delivery readiness and executive escalation. Lessons will alter the design before broad implementation.

Leadership selection will be consequential. Critical roles will receive outcome-based specifications and assessment against the work ahead, not past hierarchy. The partner will help the client decide where existing leaders can stretch with support, where responsibility should change and where external recruitment is necessary. Succession and diversity will be built into slates rather than treated as later initiatives.

Incentives and performance management must reinforce whole-account value. Revenue credit, product attachment, gross margin, implementation quality, service stability and renewal should not drive contradictory actions. Measures will be few enough to influence behaviour, and contested attribution rules will be resolved before launch. Transition arrangements will avoid destabilising near-term customer commitments.

Implementation will include role charters, governance, leadership appointments, capability sprints and a controlled transfer of decision support to client teams. By year-end, the client should see faster choices for standard opportunities, fewer late delivery objections, better visibility of total account economics and clear ownership when a converged service underperforms.

Leadership responsibilities

The Partner will own the client relationship, design integrity, engagement economics and the quality of leadership advice. They will facilitate difficult executive choices without becoming the substitute decision maker. When leaders disagree, the partner must frame the customer, economic and control consequences and identify who legitimately carries the authority.

They will direct multidisciplinary teams and ensure organisation recommendations remain connected to network, product and delivery realities. The partner will personally review role specifications, pivotal assessments and sensitive appointment advice. Confidential individual information will be tightly separated from wider programme material.

The role also requires stewardship inside the advisory firm. The partner will develop organisation practitioners with real telecommunications fluency, share reusable methods without client-identifying content and collaborate fairly with sector and technology colleagues. They must resist extending the engagement by keeping client capability dependent on consultants.

Measures of success

The client will track opportunity decision time, percentage of standard versus exceptional solutions, margin movement between bid and delivery, implementation readiness, late-stage rework, service escalations and renewal performance. Organisational success will be evident when account, product and delivery leaders can describe the same decision and owner.

Leadership measures include pivotal-role appointments, assessment quality, successor coverage, regretted attrition, representation and executive-team effectiveness. Adoption will be tested through live case observation rather than completion of workshops. The partnership will also review client trust, engagement contribution, team development and timely handover.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring 22–28 years in organisation and leadership advisory, telecommunications transformation or a combination of both. They must have led an enterprise operating-model redesign across commercial, technology and delivery boundaries and advised a chief executive on consequential leadership appointments. Generic spans-and-layers experience is insufficient.

The council will look for evidence of resolving contested decision rights, changing incentives that undermined account value and testing an organisation design through real bids or service cases. Candidates should understand enterprise coverage, solutioning, product economics, network control, service transition and the human dynamics of powerful functional leaders.

The successful partner will combine analytical precision with personal tact and courage. They must name avoidance without humiliating leaders, separate capability from politics and maintain trust when their recommendation changes an executive's remit. Excellent written role definition and disciplined handling of confidential assessment evidence are essential.

Compensation and appointment terms

The expected base range is GBP 250,000–340,000, plus annual incentive and long-term participation. Reward will reflect durable client outcomes, advisory quality, partnership contribution and development of leaders in both organisations. Admission and profit-sharing terms will be determined through the firm's governance and conflict process.

Confidentiality

The client remains unnamed because leadership remits, succession choices, account economics and service failures are sensitive. Detailed organisation and individual information will be shared only after identity, independence and confidentiality checks. Applicants should anonymise prior cases and exclude assessment reports, client charts or proprietary workforce data.