Ways of working consultant

Collaborative Ways of Working Coach / Transformation Coach The opportunity We are supporting a major international organisation as it prepares to scale a new Collaborative Ways of Working programme across the business during 2027. This is not a traditional Agile Coach role and it is not about implementing Scrum, SAFe or another framework.

The organisation wants to fundamentally improve the way people from different functions, countries and levels of seniority come together to deliver projects. Previous transformation initiatives introduced elements of Agile, but adoption was inconsistent and employees did not always understand the relevance to their work. The new approach is deliberately different: start with real business projects, help people solve real problems, and build better ways of working through practical experience.

We are therefore looking for experienced transformation practitioners who can combine strategic understanding with highly practical, hands-on coaching. What will you actually do? You will work directly with cross-functional project teams, project leaders and individual contributors, helping them establish effective ways of working and deliver meaningful business outcomes.

Projects may bring together people from areas such as Marketing, Sales, People & Culture, Legal, Procurement and other functions, often across different countries and organisational boundaries. The programme will operate across both global and local-market projects. You will: Partner with project leaders and teams to understand what they are trying to achieve and what is preventing them from getting there.

Help teams establish the practical foundations of successful projects – clear outcomes, roles, project charters, timelines, priorities, decision-making and ways of working. Coach project leaders who may have limited formal project-management or Agile experience. Improve collaboration between people from different functions who may have competing priorities, reporting lines and objectives.

Help teams identify obstacles, simplify ways of working and move stalled projects forward. Facilitate difficult conversations and help resolve tensions between stakeholders. Introduce appropriate tools, techniques and working practices without forcing teams into a predetermined methodology.

Coach people through the work rather than simply delivering training or recommendations. Build capability so that teams can ultimately operate successfully without the coach. Capture learning from individual projects and contribute to the continued development and scaling of the Collaborative Ways of Working approach.

The model is deliberately practical: understand the problem, help the team establish an effective way forward, work alongside them while they develop the capability, and then step away. What are we trying to achieve? The programme is designed to create measurable improvements in how work gets done.

Successful coaches will help the organisation: Increase the proportion of projects that reach a meaningful conclusion. Reduce projects becoming stuck, repeatedly restarting or continuing without clear outcomes.

Improve collaboration between functions, markets and global teams. Give project leaders greater confidence and practical capability to lead complex cross-functional work. Create greater clarity around project purpose, priorities, responsibilities and decision-making.

Help teams manage disagreement and competing interests constructively. Reduce unnecessary complexity and introduce simpler, more effective ways of working. Build sustainable project and collaboration capability rather than long-term dependency on external coaches.

Ensure projects ultimately create tangible value for the business, rather than simply demonstrating adoption of a methodology. The organisation has already piloted the approach with several Marketing and Sales teams, testing coaching, training and practical toolkits. The next stage is to use those learnings as the programme scales more widely during 2027.

The person we're looking for We are looking for an experienced transformation practitioner with significant experience helping organisations, leaders and teams change the way they work. You are likely to bring: 8+ years' experience within organisational, business or Agile transformation. 5+ years' experience in a coaching, transformation or comparable change role.

Strong hands-on experience working directly with project teams, rather than operating exclusively at enterprise or executive level. Experience working with senior leaders and the ability and willingness to work at ground level with project teams. Strong understanding of project delivery and the practical mechanics required to move work from idea to outcome.

Experience improving collaboration across functions, organisational boundaries and ideally countries. Experience within large, complex, multinational organisations. The ability to diagnose what is actually preventing a team from succeeding before proposing a solution.

Confidence dealing with senior and challenging stakeholders. The ability to facilitate disagreement and navigate ambiguity without needing a highly structured environment. Experience of Lean, Agile, systems thinking, continuous improvement or similar approaches – but without being wedded to any particular framework.

A practical understanding of how AI can support teams, collaboration, decision-making and project delivery. Industry experience is considerably less important than your ability to operate successfully across different organisational environments. Experience across several sectors may actually be advantageous.

Your approach matters We are particularly interested in how you work, not how many frameworks you know. You should be comfortable entering an environment where collaboration is not yet working well. You cannot rely on an existing collaborative culture – part of your role is to help create one.

You will need to be: Adaptive. You listen and understand the environment before deciding what approach to use. Practical.

You are comfortable rolling your sleeves up and helping a project leader work through the next steps. Confident. You can walk into a room containing Directors and VPs, challenge constructively and maintain credibility when your thinking is questioned.

Human. You build trust, listen carefully and work with people rather than imposing change on them. Pragmatic.

You draw from Agile, Lean, project management, systems thinking, facilitation and other disciplines as appropriate. Comfortable with ambiguity. You don't require a perfectly structured organisation, mature project environment or established collaborative culture in order to be effective.

What this role is NOT This distinction is important. We are not looking for someone whose primary approach is: Implementing a particular Agile framework.

Running ceremonies and measuring Agile maturity. Teaching teams Scrum terminology. Producing theoretical transformation models.

Delivering a top-down enterprise transformation and expecting teams to adopt it. Advising executives from a distance without getting involved in the work. Creating extensive methodology where a simple practical intervention would solve the problem.

The organisation has deliberately moved away from the idea of forcing a new methodology onto teams. Coaching, tools and support will be offered to project leaders, with teams encouraged to pull in the support they need rather than having a new way of working imposed upon them. Why this is interesting This is an opportunity to help shape a transformation programme at the point where it moves from successful pilots towards global adoption.

Rather than arriving with a finished methodology, you will have considerable scope to apply your experience, experiment with different approaches and help determine what genuinely works. The challenge is significant. Cross-functional collaboration is inconsistent, project-management capability varies considerably and some initiatives struggle to reach completion.

The organisation is specifically looking for people who are comfortable entering that environment and creating collaboration where it does not already exist. For the right person, that is exactly what makes the opportunity interesting.