Manager, Strategy Execution & Portfolio Management
Manager, Strategy Execution & Portfolio Management
222 W Adams St, 11th Floor
Chicago, Illinois, 60606
United States
West Monroe isn’t a start-up consulting firm, but we act like one.
From day one, our people have the opportunity to make a definitive personal impact for their clients and their careers. What does this mean? As a leader in the growing Strategic Growth function, the Strategy Execution Manager will have the opportunity to lead bringing our ambitious strategic plan to life. This includes translating the firmwide Strategy into actionable and quantitative plans to fulfill our purpose to Build the Next Generation of Leaders and manage its execution to achieve the firm’s aggressive growth goals. This role will provide you with many opportunities to make a visible and meaningful impact.
Think you’re up to the challenge?
We are in the process of developing an exciting and ambitious Strategic Plan (to launch in 2020) that will enable us to take our growth and performance to the next level. You could join us while we are formulating our next long-term strategic plan and own the execution of that strategy. You will be responsible for creating the program that rolls out and then monitors the execution of the strategic plan, ensuring achievement of priorities. You’ll work with leadership and cross-functional teams to drive the successful execution of strategic plans and initiatives.
The ideal candidate will have 7+ years of experience in project and portfolio management and/or PMO, consulting and strategic planning, ideally with experience creating PMOs from the ground up. He/she will be responsible to activate portfolio management best practices; assess the project portfolio (for size / feasibility / ease / sufficiency to achieve our targets), recommend priorities and trade-offs to ensure we meet (or exceed) our goals, recommend resource allocation, etc.
The right candidate is highly organized and process oriented with the ability to organize others around you, a team player and change champion (proven experiences of leading other to think and differently according to the business needs), outstanding written and verbal communication skills, and success managing priorities across a number of internal stakeholders and projects. He/she will have the opportunity to work closely with the Sr Managing Director of Strategic Growth and Executive Committee of West Monroe Partners while reporting into the Senior Manager of Strategic Growth.
Please note that this is an internal, strategy role within Shared Services
Job Summary & Responsibilities:
1. Implementation and Execution of Strategy – PMO and Portfolio Management
- Create, operationalize and lead West Monroe’s strategy execution program
- Understand the intent and outcome of firmwide strategy and developing executable roadmaps across the organization for achievement
- Scope and plan projects (set goals and objectives, create project plans, determine resources and budgets, identify risks and contingency planning, develop a change management plan and set KPIs)
- Effectively cascade and implement strategy and initiatives properly aligned with the enterprise-wide priorities; Ensure departmental/unit strategic planning projects reflect organizational strategic priorities
- Defines a robust stakeholder approach to engage the business for an effective end-to-end strategy delivery model
- Develop change management plans and coach leadership on creating and implementing effective organizational change plans
- Work with communications and people teams to ensure effective communication strategies
2. Mobilization & Monitoring of Strategy
- Act as PMO across strategic initiatives
- Execute with excellence (drive owners / contributors to deliver on time and within budget, manage stakeholders / communication, anticipate risks and identify mitigation approaches, manage the budget, monitor progress / KPIs)
- Refine our project stage gate model to drive value, speed and quality
- Mobilizes and manages through influence teams of individuals, in particular practices, office and shared services leads and operations teams, charged with executing strategies
- Develops dashboards to monitor and report progress/execution of strategic plan
- Escalates risks as necessary
- Acts as a resource across an organization to increase broad cohesion for strategic plans
3. Strategy Design/Development
- Collaborates within Strategy and Strategic Growth to identify opportunities for cross-functional synergies and strategic initiatives
- Draws insights from execution/monitoring, gathers and analyzes internal data to contribute to the team’s recommendations
- Support execution of firmwide strategy meetings and retreats
Qualifications:
- Minimum 6-8 years of experience in project and portfolio management, change management and strategic planning in a professional services environment
- Proven skills and track record successfully executing Portfolio, Program and Project Management
- Experience creating portfolio management from the ground up and managing to achieve strategic goals
- Experience motivating organizations to become more agile
- Distinctive people leadership skills with a proven track record of driving change, influencing (especially at a higher level) and stakeholder management, activating others to execute and drive results by working across departments in matrixed environment
- Strong organization skills, especially managing complex projects
- Experience translating strategic goals to successful execution
- Strong process and process execution skills
- Ability to effectively work in group environment
- Entrepreneurial and creative solution orientated mindset, with the ability to ‘think like as an owner', be flexible
- A positive, can-do attitude
- A high degree of independence and executive presence
- Outstanding written and oral communication skills (e.g., clear and compelling “story”, with accurate insights and a well thought out recommendation)
- High level of maturity in a highly visible role with access to confidential information
- Strong work ethic with demonstrated initiative and persistence
- Bachelor’s Degree required (MBA preferred)
- Certification in Project Management
- Proficiency in PM tools, Excel and PowerPoint
- Ability to travel 20-25% of the time
So, if you're looking for an opportunity to flex your Strategy muscles in a high-energy, team-oriented environment where you own your career, we'd love to hear from you.
Think you've got what it takes? Join our team and make us better.