Senior Manager - OD Delivery

ARTHAN

Job Description

Manager / Senior Manager – OD Delivery

Reporting to: Nandita, OD Lead | Location: Delhi / NCR | Experience: 6–8 years (relevant OD consulting / research)

ROLE OVERVIEW

Arthan is looking for a Manager / Senior Manager to lead and strengthen the delivery function within the Organization Development (OD) vertical. Working closely with Nandita, OD Lead, this role will take ownership of end-to-end consulting delivery across client engagements — from diagnosis and design through facilitation and impact review. The role is central to maintaining the quality, rigour, and institutional depth that define Arthan's OD work.

The role is suited to someone with a strong consulting and facilitation background, demonstrated people management capability, and a genuine commitment to equity, inclusion, and human-centred approaches to organizational change. The ideal candidate will have meaningful experience in OD consulting or research, a sensitivity to the structural and cultural complexity of social sector organizations, and the ability to hold multiple client relationships with confidence and care.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

The purpose of this role is to ensure that Arthan's OD engagements are delivered with exceptional quality, intellectual depth, and client-centricity. This means leading consulting processes, designing and facilitating interventions, managing delivery teams, and building trusted relationships with client stakeholders — while grounding all work in a commitment to equity, inclusion, and organizational effectiveness.

Organization Development at Arthan focuses on solving organization-level challenges: leadership alignment, structural clarity, performance management, culture and team effectiveness, talent systems, and people strategy — particularly for social sector organizations navigating scale, transition, and systemic complexity. This role sits at the heart of that work.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

1. OD Delivery Leadership

• Own end-to-end delivery of OD consulting engagements — from project scoping and workplan design through execution, quality review, and client sign-off.
• Lead diagnostic processes including stakeholder interviews, surveys, focus group discussions, and secondary research to surface organizational challenges and insights.
• Design and facilitate workshops, leadership convenings, team effectiveness sessions, and co-creation processes with client teams.
• Develop high-quality client deliverables including diagnostic reports, frameworks, implementation roadmaps, strategy documents, and facilitation guides.
• Ensure delivery timelines, quality standards, and client expectations are consistently met across concurrent engagements.

2. People Management and Team Development

• Provide day-to-day guidance, mentoring, and quality oversight to delivery team members working on OD engagements.
• Build team capability in OD methods, research, and facilitation by creating learning moments within active projects.
• Review and give structured feedback on deliverables produced by team members, ensuring Arthan's consulting standards are upheld.
• Foster a collaborative, equity-conscious team culture that reflects the values Arthan promotes with its clients.
• Support workload planning and resource allocation across the delivery team in coordination with the OD Lead.

3. Client Relationship Management

• Build and sustain trusted relationships with client stakeholders — including HR leads, organizational heads, programme directors, and C-suite contacts.
• Lead client communication on delivery matters: progress updates, milestone reviews, scope discussions, and feedback integration.
• Proactively surface and navigate client concerns, ambiguities, or scope shifts with professionalism and care.
• Position Arthan as a credible long-term thought partner — not just a project vendor — through the quality and character of delivery work.
• Support repeat and expanded engagement conversations by building client confidence through exceptional delivery.

4. Knowledge, Methods, and Practice Development

• Contribute to Arthan's internal knowledge base — developing tools, templates, facilitation guides, and reusable frameworks from live engagement learning.
• Stay current with emerging trends and evidence in OD, HR, DEIB, leadership development, and organizational effectiveness to enrich client-facing work.
• Support proposal development by contributing delivery design, methodology sections, and scope articulation when new opportunities are being pursued.
• Participate in vertical reviews, internal learning sessions, and peer reviews to continuously improve delivery quality and consulting practice.

5. Internal Collaboration

• Work closely with Nandita to align on delivery priorities, client strategy, and resourcing across the vertical.
• Coordinate with business development team to ensure proposals are grounded in delivery realism and differentiated value.

IDEAL CANDIDATE PROFILE

The ideal candidate is a thoughtful OD practitioner and consultant who combines intellectual rigour with warm relational intelligence. This person can hold the complexity of organizational systems, facilitate difficult conversations with skill and sensitivity, and produce consulting outputs that are both analytically sharp and practically grounded. They bring a strong personal commitment to equity and inclusion — not as a compliance posture, but as a lens that shapes how they think about organizations and how they work with people.

They are someone who takes ownership naturally, communicates with clarity and care, and finds meaning in enabling other people — within client systems and within their own team. They are experienced enough to work with confidence and humble enough to keep learning.

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE

• 6–8 years of overall professional experience, with a significant portion in OD consulting, HR advisory, organizational research, or a closely related consulting discipline.
• Demonstrated experience designing and leading OD interventions — including diagnostics, workshop facilitation, structural reviews, culture work, or leadership development.
• Track record of managing client relationships independently and delivering complex, multi-stakeholder consulting engagements.
• Experience in people management or mentoring — formally or informally — with a demonstrated ability to develop others and hold team members accountable with care.
• Prior exposure to DEIB frameworks, equity-centred practice, or HR systems in the context of organizational work is strongly preferred.
• Experience working with social sector, nonprofit, foundation, or development sector clients is an advantage, though not mandatory.

REQUIRED COMPETENCIES

• Deep grounding in OD theory and practice — including systems thinking, organizational diagnosis, change management, and team and leadership effectiveness.
• Strong facilitation skills: ability to design and hold spaces that are purposeful, inclusive, and responsive to group dynamics.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to produce high-quality reports, frameworks, and client-facing documents independently.
• Analytical capability to synthesise qualitative and quantitative data into coherent organizational insights and actionable recommendations.
• Strong interpersonal and stakeholder management skills — empathetic, perceptive, and credible across organizational levels.
• People management and coaching orientation: able to build capability in others, give constructive feedback, and create psychological safety within teams.
• Project and delivery management discipline: able to manage multiple concurrent engagements, track progress, and flag risks proactively.
• High personal ownership, resilience, and ability to navigate ambiguity in consulting environments.
• A DEIB mindset embedded in day-to-day practice — not just as subject matter, but as a way of showing up in facilitation, diagnosis, and team leadership.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

A postgraduate qualification is required. Degrees in Human Resources, Organizational Psychology, Social Work, Management, Social Sciences, or a related discipline are particularly relevant. Specialized training or certification in OD, DEIB, facilitation, coaching, or NLP would be a distinct advantage.

WHAT WILL MAKE SOMEONE STAND OUT

• Has worked as a lead consultant on OD engagements — not just as support — and can articulate the intellectual and relational choices they made.
• Brings a genuine DEIB philosophy to their work: can discuss how equity and inclusion have shaped their diagnostic, facilitation, or advisory practice.
• Has developed or significantly contributed to OD methodologies, tools, or frameworks that have been used across multiple engagements.
• Can hold a room: a skilled facilitator who is both structured and adaptive, directive when needed and open when it matters.
• Demonstrates warmth and rigour in equal measure — a consulting partner who clients trust and a team leader who colleagues grow under.
• Has experience working within or alongside HR systems — compensation, performance management, talent architecture — and understands how structural HR design shapes organizational culture.
• Is genuinely curious about how organizations work and deeply motivated by the potential for organizations to be more equitable, effective, and human.