LAB PA Performance Partner Director

Boston Consulting Group; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 180,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Boston Consulting Group seeks a LAB PA Performance Partner Director to serve as a senior strategic partner to PA leadership across London, Amsterdam and Brussels, aligning talent with client and business needs to optimise billability and staffing.

Reporting to the LAB Talent & Performance Senior Director, you will lead the LAB PA & PPPL Performance Team, drive capacity planning, career development, and ensure a transparent, commercially focused approach to performance partnering.

Qualifications

• Proven leadership of large, multi-country teams.
• Strong stakeholder management at MD-level.
• Advanced Excel and PowerPoint skills; numerate.
• Excellent English, with clear written/verbal communication.
• Experience in professional services or consulting preferred.

Responsibilities

• Act as senior strategic partner to PA leadership on staffing and commercial levers.
• Lead end-to-end staffing for PPPL populations to maximise utilisation.
• Drive capacity planning, pipeline health and pyramid structures with leadership.
• Manage performance, coaching and development across the LAB PA & PPPL team.
• Implement improvements in People processes and leverage automation/AI.

Skills

Leadership

Stakeholder management

Excel

PowerPoint

Strategic thinking

Tools

Data analysis

Job description

Boston Consulting Group is seeking a LAB PA Performance Partner Director to act as a senior strategic partner to Practice Area leadership across London, Amsterdam and Brussels, driving commercial performance by aligning talent to client and business needs.

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.

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 or 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 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 or 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 or 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 such as billability, case mix and 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, 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, both verbal and written.

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