Partner – Executive Advisory — Enterprise-Operations Centre

The mandate

Five of the nine senior leaders in a Bengaluru enterprise-operations centre will change within one year through planned succession, rotation and newly combined roles. The future team is technically credible but has not worked together, and service-line leaders still escalate cross-functional choices to the outgoing cohort. The centre’s sponsors want a Partner – Executive Advisory who can help the new executives establish authority, decision habits and productive conflict before transition fatigue affects customers.

The advisory perimeter touches approximately 2,375 employees and partners and services worth around ₹3,850 crore annually. The partner will work with the centre head, individual successors, global sponsors and the people committee. This is neither executive coaching detached from business outcomes nor an interim management assignment. Advice must be grounded in live choices about service ownership, investment, talent and stakeholder commitments, while elected executives remain visibly responsible.

The assignment contains sensitive asymmetry: some successors are known, others are still being assessed, and outgoing leaders vary in their willingness to transfer relationships. The partner must protect individual confidentiality without allowing private coaching to create unrecorded enterprise decisions. The measure of success is an independent, coherent leadership team that no longer needs the adviser in its routine operating cadence.

Global sponsors will judge the transition from different time zones and through different service relationships. The adviser must therefore distinguish team cohesion from local harmony: successors need a common enterprise position while retaining enough functional challenge to expose a weak operational promise before it travels to a customer.

Why this seat is open

The prior advisory partner accepted an external board position that creates an immediate conflict with one of the centre’s global sponsors. Their exit was accelerated and leaves no suitable internal successor at the required seniority. This is an urgent replacement, with selection expected within six to eight weeks. The conflict is being managed professionally and does not involve dissatisfaction with the advisory work.

What you will own

• Diagnose the future team’s collective accountabilities and the specific decisions currently trapped between roles.
• Advise the centre head on transition sequencing, including where overlap aids knowledge transfer and where it weakens authority.
• Support each incoming executive on a limited set of consequential business choices, with observable outcomes and stakeholder commitments.
• Design leadership forums around decisions, dissent and follow-through rather than presentations and consensual status reporting.
• Facilitate difficult conversations between outgoing and incoming leaders while respecting formal assessment and employment processes.
• Provide the people committee with themes and enterprise risks without disclosing protected individual coaching content.
• Identify dependence on informal sponsor relationships and create deliberate transfers to more than one future leader.
• Reduce advisory intensity as the team matures and leave behind simple practices that the executives can own themselves.

The first 12 months

The opening 60 days will establish a transition map covering appointments, decisions, relationships and service risk. The partner will contract confidentiality boundaries with every participant and observe the existing forums before recommending change. By day 90, the future team should agree its few shared outcomes, decision rights and escalation rules.

Over the next six months, successors will lead live cross-functional decisions with the partner observing and challenging rather than taking over. Sponsor relationships will be transferred through substantive work, not introductory meetings. The executive team will run quarterly reviews of commitments and leadership behaviour using evidence from employees and customers.

At year-end, all five transitions should have completed without a material service surprise attributable to unclear leadership. Decision cycle time on selected cross-functional issues should improve by 25%, global sponsors should recognise at least two credible contacts beyond the centre head, and the team should run its operating cadence without routine adviser facilitation.

What the board will measure

• Continuity through succession and speed with which incoming executives take visible ownership.
• Clearer cross-functional decisions with dissent and commitments recorded.
• Appropriate handling of coaching confidentiality, assessment evidence and enterprise disclosure.
• Reduced reliance on the advisory partner over time rather than institutionalised facilitation.
• Quality, conduct and development of the supporting advisory team.

The person

You are an executive-advisory partner or former operating leader who has guided a senior-team succession while business performance remained exposed. You can challenge powerful individuals without turning confidential counsel into theatre. A career limited to classroom leadership development or psychometric assessment will not satisfy the operating emphasis.

You bring 22–28 years of experience and have advised or led a perimeter of at least ₹2,250 crore affecting 1,650 people or more. Evidence should include team-level outcomes, not testimonials alone. The regional council will examine how you handled conflicting confidentiality duties and whether the leaders became less dependent on you.

This is a Bengaluru-based hybrid appointment with in-person work required during key transitions.

Compensation and terms

The role carries fixed compensation of ₹2.2–3.0 crore and performance variable. Evaluation will combine client outcomes, independence, sustainable commercial contribution and adviser development. Continuing dependency will not be treated as success. Final terms follow partnership review and current mix, with timing calibrated to conflict clearance and contractual release.

Confidentiality

The succession slate, sponsor relationships and individual assessments are strictly private. Detail will be disclosed only after qualification, conflict review and a mutual undertaking. Applicants must neither speculate about individuals nor use the rounded centre population to reverse-engineer the client.