LAB PA Performance Partner Director

Locations: London | Amsterdam | Brussels

Who We Are

Boston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, we help clients with total transformation-inspiring complex change, enabling organizations to grow, building competitive advantage, and driving bottom-line impact.

To succeed, organizations must blend digital and human capabilities. Our diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives to spark change. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting along with technology and design, corporate and digital ventures-and business purpose. We work in a uniquely collaborative model across the firm and throughout all levels of the client organization, generating results that allow our clients to thrive.

What You'll Do

Role profile

The LAB PA Performance Partner Director acts as a senior strategic partner to Practice Area (PA) leadership at the LAB (London, Amsterdam and Brussels) level, driving commercial performance by working closely with MDPs, PA Nodes and Client Team to understand client as well as commercial needs and aligning talent to these. This role will work to optimise billability, pipeline health, capacity planning, and staffing, as well as give input to Project Leader, Principal and Partner (PPPL) Career Development (CD) Chairs and support overall PPPL career development. This role will also lead the LAB PA & PPPL Performance Team, embedding a consistent, transparent and commercially focused approach to performance partnering across PAs, while managing and developing the team. Reporting to the LAB Talent & Performance Senior Director, this role will work in close partnership with the LAB Performance Director and LAB Ringfence Performance Partner Director, as well as being a trusted advisor to the LAB People & Operations Executive Director, People Chair, PA Nodes, and broader MDP group.

What you'll do

Staffing

• Act as a senior strategic partner to PA leadership, providing data driven insights, context and constructive challenges on staffing decisions, escalations and commercial levers including billability, utilisation and leakage.
• In collaboration with PA Nodes, build a forward-looking view of case demand to share with Finance and the LAB Performance Director, giving input on prioritisation to maximise commercial impact.
• Own end-to-end staffing for PPPL populations, prioritising requests, and managing deployment to maximise utilisation, minimise leakage and reduce reliance on cross-system staffing.
• Proactively manage capacity and staffing risk, balancing short term deployment against long term pipeline health to optimise revenue while building trust in staffing processes and transparency of decisions.
• Review and approve/decline holiday, FlexMonths and exceptional LOA requests, balancing individual flexibility with capacity targets and work with the CD Expertise and HR teams to manage exceptional staffing (e.g. personnel issues) where relevant.
• Drive talent risk management across the PA, including wellbeing signalling, Teaming insight gathering, PLOA phase out oversight, and all LOA reintegration planning, in all cases assessing the individual and commercial delivery impact and mitigating both accordingly.

Pyramid Planning

• Lead proactive capacity planning and pipeline reviews, translating commercial demand signals and platform assessment into sustainable pyramid structures and hiring/mobility strategies in partnership with PA leadership and People Analytics.
• Lead PA affiliation and integration approvals for Consultants, in collaboration with PA Nodes, providing relevant individual and capacity context to ensure effective decision making.
• Ensure PL+ lateral hires are effectively onboarded and offboarded in/out of the PA and Nodes are notified.

Career Development (CD)

• Build relationships with PPPLs through regular touch bases integrating career development conversations with commercial outcomes e.g. billability, case mix, client exposure.
• Drive PA calibration and share insights with CD Chairs ahead of Career Development Committee (CDC) meetings. Shape promotion pipelines, including providing strategic input into MDP nomination forums through a lens of succession planning, sponsorship and business need.
• Synthesise development plans that support individual progression and PA commercial performance and collaborate with the CD Expertise Team on significant outcomes from CDC that may be useful context for a particular individual.

Team Leadership

• Own the LAB PA & PPPL Performance Team strategy, partnering with the LAB Ringfence Performance Partner Director to optimise PPPL deployment, utilisation and billability towards agreed targets and share regular updates with senior leadership.
• Build a collaborative, flexible team and lead performance management, individual support and team development through regular coaching, feedback and development conversations. Set the direction for consistent, commercially grounded performance partnering practices across PAs, empowering the team to apply this to their PAs.
• Navigate high-stakes prioritisation decisions across PAs, act as the senior escalation point for complex staffing and performance challenges for PPPLs.
• Drive continuous improvement in People processes and ways of working, identifying opportunities to make delivery more efficient, scalable and responsive to evolving commercial priorities, including through automation and AI. Partner with wider People Team functions and Global and Regional counterparts to embed improvements and strengthen end-to-end delivery.

You're good at

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to adapt messaging and engage effectively with a diverse range of stakeholders.
• Strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to act as a thought partner and trusted advisor.
• Strong teaming skills, with the ability to build effective working relationships across functions and geographies, and leverage these relationships to deliver positive outcomes.
• Strong people leadership, with the ability to set direction for a team, drive performance and coach others to develop their own leadership capability.
• Self-motivated, with the ability to take initiative, work independently, and prioritise effectively in a fast-paced environment.
• Flexible and adaptive mindset, with a positive approach to change, and a willingness to challenge established ways of working.

What You'll Bring

• Minimum 10 years of relevant professional experience, including ideally in an international professional services firm.
• Stakeholder management experience, with the ability to influence and partner at MDP level.
• Highly proficient in Excel and PowerPoint, and well experienced numerate.
• Excellent English skills (verbal and written communication).

Please note this position is not restricted solely to the responsibilities listed above and that the job scope and responsibilities are subject to change

Boston Consulting Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity / expression, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected under national, provincial, or local law, where applicable, and those with criminal histories will be considered in a manner consistent with applicable state and local laws.
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