You are Álvaro Mendes. This morning a firmwide email made you Head of the Digital Transformation practice at Meridian Iberia Consulting in Barcelona: a job half the firm took for granted would go to Núria Camps, who now reports to you. You have six working days before the practice's flagship mandate must be staffed, and before anything else you must decide which relationship to secure first.
The situation
Meridian Iberia is a Barcelona-based management and technology consultancy: 640 consultants in Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon, €92 million of fees in 2025 and a 19% operating margin. It has doubled in four years, so promotions like yours are frequent and closely watched. Its distinctive habit is a public "engagement marketplace" dashboard where the whole firm sees every major staffing and every forecast a leader commits to. Your practice: 38 consultants and €21 million of fees a year.
Núria has been at the firm nine years, built the practice's two largest relationships and holds three of its five largest accounts, about €9.5 million of fees a year. Two rival Barcelona firms are hiring senior digital-transformation leads. Five private messages have already reached the HR business partner questioning how your promotion was handled. You spent five years in the practice, most of them one level below her, and you have never run a department.
On day two the Grupo Camino mandate must be staffed: €4.2 million for the firm's third-largest client, which has asked for "a senior, credible lead"; Núria built that relationship over four years. On day three the partners want a public Q3 forecast. Around you: the strongest person on your team, the natural candidate to be your right hand; the colleagues and partners who pushed hardest for your promotion; and the partnership, which tracks how much of your authority it actually backs. The reading Meridian requires of new heads is blunt: people who have just gained power tend to overclaim credit, consult less than they think and over-trust their own judgment. You read it this morning.