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Role Description – Chief Operating Officer

The Role – Context

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) will work closely with our CEO, Executive Team and Trustees to shape the organisation and network Citizens Advice needs to become. The role will lead a directorate bringing together the core functions that enable Citizens Advice to operate well now, while building the organisational and wider system foundations needed for the future.

This role is about strengthening the whole system’s ability to deliver. It brings together strategy and impact, finance and corporate services, people, equity and belonging, and organisational design and development into one integrated leadership portfolio. Together, these functions will help Citizens Advice make clearer choices about its priorities, focus resources where they will have the greatest effect, build the leadership and capabilities needed for the future, and ensure our culture and ways of working support the kind of service we need to become.

Citizens Advice has been through a significant period of organisational change over the last two years. The next phase is less about further redesign and more about ensuring that change is embedded, that the organisation is able to make and execute decisions effectively, and that our structures, systems and ways of working deliver the benefits intended. The COO will bring clarity, pace and organisational discipline, recognising where further change is genuinely required and where the priority is to make what we already have work better.

They will provide senior leadership for strategy and organisational effectiveness at a national level, helping us translate our strategy into practical choices, sustainable plans and system-wide change. This will include strengthening our ability to make sound decisions where information is incomplete, balancing the need for evidence with the need to act, learn and adapt.

The role will ensure that our financial decisions, people priorities, equity, diversity and inclusion ambitions, organisational development work and strategic choices are pulling in the same direction. In particular, the COO will help ensure finance is an active enabler of organisational choices, investment and sustainable delivery. You don’t need to be a qualified accountant but you should be comfortable working with and giving strategic direction to finance teams.

This is a broad leadership role, but we are not looking for someone who is the deepest specialist in every part of the portfolio. There are experienced Directors leading each of these areas. The COO will lead through them, asking the right questions, connecting issues across functions, identifying where intervention is needed and giving strong leaders the space and authority to do their jobs well.

The three Executive Directors and their teams will together ensure that choices are properly connected and support the future effectiveness of Citizens’ Advice. In particular, the COO will work closely with the ED for Client & Member Services on issues relating to data and technology, linking to the digital strategy for service delivery, and with the ED for Partnerships and Advocacy on our income strategy and resourcing model.

The successful candidate will bring strong strategic judgement, operational discipline, exceptional EQ and practical systems thinking; they will also have a strong social justice lens. This is a role for someone who reads people and situations well, builds trust quickly and understands how to use their influence. You will know when to challenge, when to listen, when to build consensus and when a decision simply needs to be made.

The Team

This role is a key member of our Executive Committee and will work closely and collaboratively with our CEO, fellow Executive Directors and our Trustees to provide strategic and corporate leadership to Citizens Advice.

The departments making up the COO’s directorate are:

  • Strategy and Impact (including Portfolio, Planning and Governance teams)
  • Organisational Design and Development (including Learning, Leadership and Culture, Internal Communications & Engagement teams)
  • People (including Volunteering team)
  • Equity and Belonging
  • Finance and Corporate Services (including Legal, Procurement and Properties teams).

Role Profile

Band:

Executive Director.

Reporting To:

Chief Executive Officer.

Proficient Salary:

£138,009 per annum.

Location:

Blended between office and home, England and Wales.

It is expected that Executive Directors will spend a minimum of two days per week in the London office.

Travel will be required, including visits to local Citizens Advice, other offices of the national charity in Birmingham, Cardiff and Leeds, stakeholder organisations and events.

Key Role Parameters

There are three inter-linking spaces where this role operates.

1. Corporate Leadership

The Chief Operating Officer will be an integral member of our Executive leadership team at Citizens Advice, providing strategic and corporate leadership to the national charity and the wider service by:

  • Jointly owning the establishment, implementation and alignment of our strategy and missions, including playing a visible role in communicating a clear strategic narrative across the wider service.
  • Helping translate strategy into a manageable set of priorities, choices and actions, ensuring that Citizens’ Advice maintains momentum and is able to make effective decisions without waiting for perfect information.
  • Leading and contributing to organisational change and transformation, with a particular emphasis on embedding change already underway, understanding whether intended benefits are being realised and implementing effectively.
  • Taking ownership for financial and operational performance and risk across their directorate and contributing to these matters across the national organisation. The COO will bring a strategic view of our financial and business model, resource allocation and longer-term sustainability.
  • Strengthening organisational discipline and accountability while avoiding unnecessary process or bureaucracy, modelling effective decision-making and empowering others to make well-judged, evidence-informed decisions.
  • Acting as a cultural steward and driving a focus on equity, diversity and inclusion, supporting our social justice purpose, our mission to close the advice gap and the development of a culture where different perspectives are heard and acted upon.
  • Building and maintaining strong relationships with Trustees, providing updates, advice and counsel and acting as a trusted strategic partner to the CEO and Executive Director colleagues.
  • Working particularly closely with the CEO to provide coherence across the internal organisation, take ownership of issues where appropriate and create greater capacity for the CEO to focus on external leadership, policy and the wider environment.
  • Build strong relationships with local Citizens Advice to understand and learn from local contexts and identify how the national organisation can best strengthen capability and capacity across the network.
  • Taking a system-wide leadership approach, centring the voice and needs of our members and clients in decision-making, planning and engagement.
  • Navigating and operating effectively within a changing political, social and financial environment at national scale, building and nurturing impactful relationships.

2. Collaborative, System-Wide Leadership Across the Portfolio

The Chief Operating Officer will add value to the individual disciplines within the directorate through their strategic view of the whole.

Directors within the portfolio will provide professional and operational leadership for their areas. The COO will not seek to replicate their expertise. Instead, they will set direction, connect issues across functions, hold cross-functional trade-offs and ensure that individual decisions support the interests of the whole organisation and wider service.

A central part of the role will be understanding Citizens Advice as a system: where responsibilities sit, how decisions are made, where friction exists and which levers can make the biggest practical difference.

They will do this by:

  • Leading the national organisation’s ‘engine room’, ensuring that strategy, finance, people, culture, EDI, governance and organisational development reinforce one another and provide strong foundations for Citizens Advice to operate effectively and sustainably.
  • Creating greater consistency in the way priorities are agreed, decisions are made and commitments are followed through across the organisation.
  • Leading the continued development of our service-wide strategy and organisational effectiveness work, helping Citizens Advice identify what to start, stop, scale, simplify or change.
  • Ensuring Citizens Advice has the strategic, financial and delivery disciplines needed to make clear choices, focus resources well and deliver sustainably.
  • Ensure the right connectivity of financial insight, longer-term modelling with planning, performance and portfolio management to support better decisions about priorities, investment, capacity and pace.
  • Helping develop a stronger shared understanding of our business and financial model and how it may need to evolve as commissioning, devolution and the wider operating environment change.
  • Embedding EDI in national and service-wide development work, shaping leadership, decision-making, culture and organisational practice and advancing our mission to close the gap in access to and experience of advice for marginalised communities.
  • Ensuring our People and Culture strategy builds the leadership, workforce, culture and capabilities Citizens Advice needs for the future, while drawing on learning and insight from across the service.
  • Ensuring Citizens Advice has strong governance, legal, procurement and corporate foundations, together with the behaviours and disciplines needed to manage risk and steward resources well.
  • Working effectively across organisational boundaries where the COO does not have direct authority, including with Data, Technology, Membership and other parts of Citizens Advice whose work is critical to system-wide change.
  • Helping the national organisation become more effective in ways that local Citizens Advice organisations can recognise and value, while respecting the independence, expertise and leadership that sit within the network.

3. Directorate Leadership

Providing strategic and people leadership to the System Development and Effectiveness directorate, overseeing the following departments within their portfolio so they deliver to the best of their ability.

Strategy and Impact

This department leads the end-to-end approach to our service-wide strategy and missions, from strategy development through planning, portfolio management, performance and governance to evidence and impact. It helps Citizens Advice understand where it is going, how work aligns to our missions, whether we are making progress and what we are learning.

Organisational Design and Development

This department helps build the culture, capabilities, structures and ways of working needed for the future. It strengthens colleague experience, leadership, learning, communication and engagement, supporting Citizens Advice to become more connected, adaptable and effective.

People

This department provides the people and volunteering strategy, services and support needed to enable volunteers, colleagues and leaders to work effectively. Its remit includes core people and volunteer services, employee relations and advice, reward, payroll,  people policy and the development of people practices that support a positive, inclusive and high-performing organisation.

Equity and Belonging

This department helps create the conditions for equity, diversity and inclusion for colleagues and clients, taking a social justice approach. It strengthens accountability, insight and guidance across Citizens’ Advice to reduce EDI disparities and improve outcomes.

Finance and Corporate Services

This department provides leadership and expertise across finance, legal, procurement and property. Its remit is to ensure Citizens’ Advice has the financial stewardship, strategic financial insight, infrastructure, controls and corporate foundations needed to operate responsibly, sustainably and effectively.

Across these functions, the Chief Operating Officer will:

  • Build, mentor and support a high-performing leadership team, fostering collaboration, inclusion, continuous improvement and shared accountability
  • Give Directors clarity and space to exercise their expertise while providing effective challenge and support.
  • Encourage open communication and collaboration across departments and directorates, ensuring alignment with the organisation’s purpose, strategy and missions.
  • Ensure specialist teams do not operate as separate enabling functions, but work together as an integrated system to strengthen organisational effectiveness.
  • Help create a culture in which decisions are taken at the appropriate level, people are clear about their accountability and agreed actions are followed through.
  • Bring energy, curiosity and humility to the organisation, recognising what already works well as well as identifying where change is needed.