Cornerstone
Head of Business Change
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About Cornerstone
Cornerstone is the UK’s leading mobile and digital infrastructure provider, managing over 15,700 sites and holding 35% of the market. Our mission is to be famous for excellence in delivery, embracing transformation with our people and our customers at its heart.
This role sits at the centre of our Technology, Data & Digital strategy. One of the four priorities in that strategy is to fix how we engage the business and deliver change: a clear demand and portfolio process, proper delivery, and benefits that are actually realised.
Role summary
The Head of Business Change leads the business change and adoption function. You own how change is prioritised, governed, delivered and adopted across the Technology, Data & Digital portfolio, and the business change that depends on it.
You are accountable for business engagement and demand management, the investment portfolio, project and programme delivery, business analysis, test assurance, adoption and benefits realisation.
This is a build role. We already deliver projects, but the engagement model, demand process, portfolio governance, product and service ownership, adoption and benefits management are not where the strategy needs them to be. You will put that operating model in place, strengthen the team, and keep current delivery under control while you do it.
Scope of accountability
- How Technology, Data & Digital and the business engage on change: discovery, shaping and agreement.
- Single demand intake, triage, prioritisation and the decision forums that sit around it.
- The investment portfolio: funding, capacity, dependencies and financial control.
- Enterprise PMO: standards, reporting, risk, dependencies and portfolio visibility.
- Project and programme delivery (agile, waterfall or hybrid).
- Business analysis: requirements, process design and traceability into delivery.
- Software / test QA for change delivery. Data quality sits with the Head of Data.
- The product and service ownership model: named owners, service catalogue, measures and roadmaps, working with platform and domain owners.
- Adoption, business readiness, communication and workforce impact.
- Benefits management: plans, tracking, realisation, and recommendations to stop, defer or resequence work.
- A governed route for innovation and experiments into the portfolio.
Key responsibilities
Business engagement, demand and portfolio
- Define and run the business engagement model, with clear roles for sponsors, outcome owners, engagement leads and design authorities.
- Put in place a single demand process so work is shaped against strategy, capacity and risk before it is funded.
- Own the Technology, Data & Digital portfolio view: what is in, what it costs, what depends on what, and how delivery is going.
- Support the portfolio decision forums with clear options to approve, stop, defer or resequence.
- Make sure work entering the portfolio has a sponsor, an outcome owner, a benefits case and named dependencies on architecture, data and security.
Delivery governance and PMO
- Establish and run the Enterprise PMO: standards, stage controls, reporting, RAID, dependencies and financials.
- Set ways of working that cover agile, waterfall and hybrid delivery without adding process for its own sake.
- Give executives portfolio reporting they can take decisions from.
- Manage cross-portfolio risk, dependencies and resource conflict, and escalate early.
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Project and programme delivery
- Lead delivery for the Technology, Data & Digital change portfolio and the business initiatives that depend on it.
- Keep plans realistic against capacity and sequenced to the strategy: foundations first, then connect and modernise, then scale.
- Hold delivery to time, cost, quality and scope.
- Work with Enterprise Architecture, Data and Security so design and controls are part of delivery, not bolted on at the end.
Business analysis, testing and quality
- Lead business analysis so requirements, processes and acceptance criteria are clear and owned.
- Make sure testing and software QA give a real view of quality before release.
- Keep a hard line between software QA and data quality / data governance (Head of Data).
Product, service and innovation
- Put in place the product and service ownership model the strategy calls for: named owners, catalogue, measures and roadmaps.
- Ownership sits with the business or platform lead. This function provides the engagement, portfolio and delivery mechanism around it.
- Create a governed path for innovation so experiments can be funded or stopped without bypassing the portfolio.
Adoption, benefits and continuous improvement
- Own adoption and business readiness for major change: communication, training, cutover and go-live.
- Put benefits management in place: baseline, target, who tracks it, and a review after delivery.
- Improve how we deliver through better tools, shared playbooks and lessons learned.
- Judge change on whether it was adopted and whether the benefits landed, not on whether the project closed.
Leadership and stakeholders
- Lead the team across PMO, business analysis, project delivery, testing and change / adoption.
- Work with senior stakeholders in the business and technology to keep demand aligned to strategy and capacity.
- Work as a peer to the Head of Data and the Head of AI, Architecture & Digital Operations, with clear hand-offs between delivery, architecture, operations and data.
- Build the team and ways of working needed for Horizon 1 and the later stages of the strategy.
Measures of success
- Business engagement, demand and portfolio model agreed and in use, with named sponsors and outcome owners on priority work.
- One clear view of the Technology, Data & Digital portfolio: priorities, funding, capacity, dependencies and delivery health.
- Demand-to-decision time visible and improving. Work that does not fit the strategy is stopped, deferred or resequenced.
- Investment mapped to the strategy priorities. Horizon 1 foundation work is protected.
- Delivery is predictable: milestones met, risks and dependencies managed, exceptions raised early.
- Product and service ownership in place for priority services, with roadmaps and measures.
- Adoption and readiness planned for major releases.
- Benefits plans on priority initiatives, tracked after go-live.
- Sponsors use the portfolio process to make decisions.
- Standards and controls that people follow, without excess process.
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Knowledge, skills and experience
- 8+ years in senior change, transformation or delivery leadership (Head of Business Change, Head of PMO, Transformation Director, Programme Director or similar).
- Evidence of standing up or maturing an enterprise delivery and change capability: engagement, demand, portfolio, delivery standards, adoption and benefits. Not just running a settled PMO.
- Led multi-project or multi-programme portfolios, including capacity, dependency and investment trade-offs.
- Solid working knowledge of portfolio, programme and project methods across agile, waterfall and hybrid.
- Experience running business engagement / demand models with senior sponsors.
- Comfortable with product and service ownership models, and with benefits tracking that continues after go-live.
- Used to working with architecture, data, security and operations inside delivery.
- Infrastructure, telecoms, asset-intensive or similarly complex environments strongly preferred.
- Aware of the UK CNI / telecoms regulatory context and what it means for change control and release.
- Strong with senior stakeholders. Able to say no, or not yet, when demand does not fit capacity or strategy.
- Commercially aware. Able to recommend investment and prioritisation on value, risk and strategic fit.
- Able to lead a mixed team and raise delivery maturity without dropping current commitments.
Leadership expectations
- Happy to build in an imperfect environment: set direction when demand is competing, get hands-on where needed, and put foundations in before scaling.
- Own the change agenda end to end: engagement through to benefits.
- Enough governance to make safe investment and delivery decisions. No more than that.
- Explain portfolio choices to executives in terms of outcomes, capacity and benefits.
- Show progress through clearer priorities, more reliable delivery, better adoption and tracked benefits.
Why Join Us?
- Reward & Recognition: Competitive salary and an excellent bonus structure.
- Time to Recharge: 30 days’ annual leave.
- Long Term Security: Competitive pension scheme and life insurance
- Flexibility: Hybrid working to help you balance work and home life.
- Health & Wellbeing: Private medical insurance including dental and optical cover.
- Lifestyle Perks: Cycle to Work scheme, Electric Car scheme, and retail discounts.
- Community & Growth: A generous refer a friend scheme.
Our commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) is fundamental to our success. We strive to cultivate an inclusive environment where every employee feels valued, respected, and empowered. By embracing unique perspectives and experiences, we drive innovation and drive our organisation forward, therefore, we recognise the importance of welcoming applications from candidates of all backgrounds.
We want to ensure everyone is able to present their best self throughout the recruitment process so if you require any adjustments, please let us know.
If this role is of interest to you and you would like to find out more, please do apply with an up to date version of your CV.
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