Principal - Melbourne / Brisbane

Key Points

• Principal – Melbourne or Brisbane based, full-time (0.8 FTE considered for the right candidate)
• Lead positive impact within a dynamic, growing and values-driven business
• Partner with organisations across Australia in the health, mental health, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and social services sectors
• 8+ years of management or strategy consulting experience plus experience working in at least two of Impact Co.’s sectors of focus
• Salary: $180,000 - $220,000 + super + bonus of up to 10% of base salary
• Every second Friday off, with no reduction in pay (i.e. compressing the hours from 10 business days into 9 working days)

We particularly welcome candidates whose expertise broadens our capability across organisational and operating model design, transformation, service and program costing, and financial sustainability or cost optimisation.

About Impact Co.

Impact Co. is a management consulting agency with a mission to shape a more equitable society. We do this by enabling people, organisations and communities to amplify their positive impact.

Established in 2017, Impact Co. has grown to a team of 25+ consultants across our Melbourne and Brisbane offices, working with a national client base of 150+ and having delivered more than 400 projects across our sectors of focus: Health, Mental Health, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Social Services. Bringing deep sector knowledge and facilitation expertise, we always keep people at the heart of projects.

Our services

We specialise in the following services:

• Insights: Data analytics, User insights, Needs assessment
• Strategy: Strategy and policy development, Strategic and business planning, Feasibility studies and business cases
• Design: Service planning and design, Product design, Operating model design
• Evaluation: Program and service evaluation, Organisational reviews

Our values

• Heart: We listen deeply to the people closest to the problem, including people with lived and living experience and individuals from hard-to-reach groups.
• Fresh: We use the latest sector expertise and evidence to inform our ideas. We tackle problems in unexpected ways. Open and unafraid, we surprise our clients with our original thinking.
• Grit: We’re tenacious in our pursuit of a more equitable Australia and good at getting down to business. We adopt agile ways of working and robust processes that allow us to deliver large and complex projects within tight timeframes.

Team benefits

• Full-time role with every second Friday off (i.e. compressing the hours from 10 business days into 9 working days)
• Flexible and hybrid working, with the autonomy to structure your week around client, team and personal commitments across our Melbourne and Brisbane offices
• 5 extra days of leave each year (i.e. 3 wellbeing days, birthday day-off and Impact Co. day). This is in addition to the standard 20 days of annual leave
• $300 work-from-home fund
• Parenthood leave for primary (12 weeks) and secondary (2 weeks) carers, offered on a gender-neutral basis, with superannuation paid during unpaid leave
• An annual professional development budget, paid professional memberships, and support to build your profile through speaking and sector engagement

A safe and inclusive workplace

We are an organisation that is deeply committed to diversity and equity. We demonstrate this by creating a workplace that embraces and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and contributions, and employing people from diverse backgrounds and identities, who are committed to championing positive cultural and social change.

The Position

We are seeking a Principal to join our dynamic and growing team of management consultants, based in either our Melbourne or Brisbane office, to lead projects across the health, mental health, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and social services sectors.

This is a key role to support Impact Co.’s continued growth. You will be leading consulting projects from inception to completion, delivering practical and meaningful impact for our clients. It is this impact which is often most valued, and which differentiates us from our peers. As a Principal, you will also carry business-level leadership and commercial accountability, overseeing the quality, margin and client satisfaction of every project across your portfolio, and helping steward the firm’s strategic growth.

In addition, you will play a key role in people leadership, business development, practice and sector leadership, strategic decision-making as a member of the senior leadership team, and in shaping how we use AI to lift the quality and pace of our work.

The work that you will be doing includes:

Project Leadership – Leading client projects at Impact Co., ensuring that value to clients is maximised, practical and meaningful impact is delivered, and that projects are delivered to scope, time and margin. You will provide strategic oversight and quality assurance across your portfolio, setting the standard for how AI is used in delivery, using it to lift quality and pace, verifying every output before it reaches a client, and intervening early where quality, risk or commercial performance needs attention

Note: It is expected that you will be able to independently execute any of the following activities to a high standard to be able to lead projects effectively:

• Research
• Stakeholder consultations
• Quantitative and qualitative analysis
• Report writing
• Business and financial modelling
• Workshop facilitation
• Using AI tools to accelerate research, analysis, synthesis and drafting, with the judgement to know when to use them, how to verify outputs, and when not to

People Leadership – Acting as Performance Development Manager for Senior Managers, Managers, Senior Consultants, Consultants and Associate Consultants: coaching, mentoring and building capability, developing leadership succession, and being a positive influence and role model more generally across the organisation

Business Development – This will include:

• Leading or supporting a team to respond to written requests for quote, ensuring the responses are well-crafted and speak to Impact Co.’s unique market offering
• Actively nurturing and strengthening relationships with existing and new clients
• Proactively identifying growth and business expansion opportunities for Impact Co. This will require you to actively engage your existing network, as well as identify and pursue other opportunities as they arise (ie, as a result of sector reform)

Firm and Practice Leadership – Championing Impact Co.’s consulting delivery model and quality standards, building our teams’ AI capability and sharing what works across the firm, and contributing to senior leadership decisions on growth, people and operations

What we’re looking for

• 8+ years of management or strategy consulting experience, ideally gained within an established management consulting firm. We will also consider candidates with equivalent in-house strategy, transformation or commercial leadership experience
• Experience in at least two of our sectors of focus
• Experience in successfully leading the delivery of complex consulting projects
• Experience in leading multiple consulting projects simultaneously
• Confident facilitator with extensive experience facilitating workshops with senior organisational leaders
• Proven track record of business development, with the network and credibility to originate significant new revenue for Impact Co. (in the order of $1.5 million a year once established), and a strong proposal win rate
• Strong people leadership skills, including experience in coaching and mentoring, as well as giving regular, strengths-based feedback
• Experience supporting a growing business (or areas within a business)
• Naturally displays our values of fresh, heart and grit
• Highly regarded: experience in organisational and operating model design (for example structural reviews, operating model change, transformation), and/or service and program costing, financial sustainability and cost optimisation
• Demonstrated use of AI tools in consulting delivery (for example research, synthesis, analysis, drafting or modelling), with sound judgement on data privacy, client confidentiality and verification of outputs

The attributes of a successful Principal include:

• Committed: Passion for consulting and working across a wide range of projects that are designed to deliver a positive social impact
• Confidence: Consistently displays a calm and confident sense of belief in their teams, and respective projects, even in times of uncertainty or adversity
• Communication: Communicates succinctly and clearly, and with language, tone and narrative that increases client and stakeholder engagement
• Relationships: Creates relationships that display mutual trust, respect and confidence
• Strategic thinking: Contributes valuable thought leadership and strategic insight and direction to projects
• Time management: Organises their time so that they are able to prioritise teams and projects that need additional support or guidance
• Risk mitigation: Constantly asks "what if" and pre-empts personnel, process and project challenges and issues whilst empowering their teams to prevent, mitigate or solve challenges themselves
• Analytical: Supports teams to conduct their research and analysis with an intentional and systematic methodology, including quantitative, financial and costing analysis
• Facilitative: Demonstrates excellent facilitation skills with a variety of stakeholders and creates space for team members to practice their facilitation
• Committed to quality: Critiques and reviews deliverables (inc. facilitations), empowering teams to identify learning and development opportunities
• AI-engaged: Uses AI to raise the quality and pace of work, applies judgement about where it adds value and where it doesn’t, and coaches teams to use it well

Contact

For any questions, please contact us at apply@impactco.au using the subject line: Principal - Melbourne / Brisbane enquiry via EthicalJobs.