About us

In 2010, the then Prime Minister created the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) to apply behavioural science to public policy in the UK. In 2014 we became a social purpose company, owned by the Cabinet Office, Nesta (an innovation charity) and our employees.

BIT works with governments around the world in almost every policy area. Whilst the subject and output of our projects varies considerably, there are common threads: we try to understand the contexts in which people make decisions; we notice small details; we come up with innovative ideas for solving policy problems; and we measure the impact of everything we do as robustly as we can.

BIT selects staff on the basis of our organisation’s values: always prioritising social impact; empiricism and humility; fresh thinking, collaboration; and public service.

Purpose of the Role

The Managing Director (MD) is responsible for managing the performance, development and wellbeing of BIT in its UK offices (London and Manchester). Reporting directly to our CEO and supporting him with his responsibilities to the BIT Board, the post-holder provides BIT-wide leadership supporting and working with the Executive team to deliver our core corporate aims: social impact; financial sustainability; cutting edge and high-quality delivery; and staff engagement and development.

Organisational Context

The MD is a key position in BIT’s leadership, in recognition of the scope and scale of responsibility the position is acknowledged as the Deputy CEO. Reporting into this role are the UK-based directors responsible for the policy clusters as well as the functional leads: 8 direct reports with c120 employees.

Responsibilities

The MD will be managing the day-to-day performance of our UK offices, leading on the delivery of the strategic priorities of the company. Specifically the MD will, within the business according to our current strategy, drive:

• Social impact: to ensure that BIT remains among the world-leaders in applied behavioural science

• Financial sustainability: to ensure the financial health and sustainability of the business including returns to shareholders

• Cutting edge and high quality delivery: to ensure quality and high standards across the whole organisation

• Staff engagement and development: shape, support and develop a strong executive team, and ensure that all in BIT have the right skills, capabilities and behaviours to support a sustainable business where employees thrive

• Overall commercial delivery; operationalising the priorities within the current BIT strategy and optimising delivery of the them

Skills and Experience

Essential

• Successful track record of leading the management of high performance professional services organisations that deliver social and/or business impact

• High levels of emotional intelligence

• Collaborative and engaging style with proven ability to balance different priorities and to broker internal decision making

• Experience of working effectively in an environment in which policy is a key factor for example in government, academia, industry or for a consulting/advisory firm

• Deep commitment to the values of BIT and the philosophy of social purpose businesses

• Prior experience of being fully accountable as an Executive tier leader with responsibilities at Board level

Desirable

• Some knowledge/experience of behavioural science

• Operating in a business that has included some employee ownership

• Working in a senior role in a business that had to transition from start up to a more established enterprise where a heavy emphasis was on the systems, behaviours, procedures and employee skills required to manage that transition

• Experience of playing a leading role in a business that has multiple locations, strong sense of 'regionalism’ and in country ‘ownership’ and a commitment to working in ‘clusters’

We very much hope you are inspired to apply for this position. If you have any questions whilst you prepare your application please contact, in confidence, Caron Macmillan on caron.macmillan@bi.team.

Initial interviews with long-listed candidates will be on 1-2 October. We will confirm to long-listed candidates the time and location of their initial interview and also details of the format by 5pm on 26 September.