New Operations & Performance Manager at Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

Focus of the Role

• ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­At the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), we work at the highest levels of government to help leaders go further and faster to make their citizens’ lives better. Moving the dial on the great global challenges of our time requires engaged, incentivised, focused and motivated leaders. When political leadership is relentlessly deployed, at the highest levels, incredible things can be achieved.
• Using our distinctive expertise and global outlook and guided by the unique insights and perspective of our Executive Chairman Sir Tony Blair, our dedicated experts and embedded teams advise governments all over the world in strategy, policy and delivery, underpinned by technology. 
• Our functional offers include Strategy: supporting political leaders to identify the barriers to progress, Policy: finding the right solutions, Delivery: making change happen, and harnessing the transformative power of Technology to support leaders to engage with forward-looking opportunities.   Sectorally, we work on the topics at the top of political agendas from economic prosperity, climate change and energy, health and education, to peace and security.
• The New Operations and Performance Manager is a key role in within a new team, which is tasked with driving the quality and performance of TBI’s global Advisory offer and overseeing the set-up of new country operations worldwide.  To be successful the team must re-invest the lessons that emerge from its work on quality and performance into a global learning, leadership and knowledge agenda, and into designing better projects in future, to deliver even more impact for our government clients. 
• Reporting directly to the Executive Director - New Operations and Performance, and working across the whole team, the Manager will take a holistic view of the team’s portfolio of work to enhance the implementation of the team’s strategy and ensure that we are role modelling the culture of quality and performance that we seek to build across the global Advisory division.  To achieve this the Manager will work closely with the four Directors in the team to realise greater alignment across the portfolio of work.
• We welcome applicants who have an existing right to work in one of our office hubs in London, Abu Dhabi, Nairobi from which you will be based

Key Responsibilities
The key responsibilities of this role will include:

Strategy & Planning​

• With the Executive Director help establish, maintain and continually improve the New Operations and Performance global strategy. Maintaining a holistic view of the entire portfolio, support the framing of strategic ideation and guide discussions from big ideas to actionable execution plans.
• Help the ED set and maintain global and central team work flow cadence, planning​, and communication.
• Coordinate with Regional Directors, and other members of the Advisory leadership team, on an ongoing basis to inform and evolve strategy and planning across the team.
• Work with the ED to link strategic planning to budget and resource decisions, ensuring effective coordination alongside quarterly finance processes.
• Improve and embed Objectives and Key Results (OKR) processes and monitoring progress across New Operations and Performance to ensure that the team role models the quality and performance agenda that it’s spearheading for the global Advisory division.

Execution & Monitoring​

• Review and recommend improvements to data/insights generation, visualisation and utilisation in NO&P and across TBI, driving tech-enabled and automated processes led by the team.
• Support the team to identify additional implementation and delivery partners in the global environment to support the delivery of our objectives.
• Lead, or contribute to, strategic workstreams which advance the team’s objectives and TBI Advisory’s corporate strategy.
• Create presentations and briefings for the Executive team and Executive Chairman, and other reports etc for internal and external audiences.

People​

• Support team cohesion and culture, steward and champion a “One TBI” mentality with the goal of increasing clarity of our department and organisational objectives and contributing to the broader TBI community.
• Lead team gatherings, interfaces and global retreats to ensure effective coordination across the team’s efforts.
• Strengthen linkages and collaboration across TBI, providing mentorship and support to the regionally based staff to adopt and implement centrally designed systems. Creating strong internal alignment between NO&P, Global Advisory and with the wider organisation.
• Establish departmental and team surveys and development support methods to improve performance and cohesion.

Person Specification
The successful candidate should demonstrate the majority of the following:

• Strong experience in a manager position in a consulting firm, foundation/NGO, or private sector organization supervising and executing across multiple workstreams simultaneously
• Demonstrable strength in structured problem solving, top-down communication, and portfolio thinking
• Experience with international development, public sector, and technology for development programming is highly desired
• Experience in one of the team’s core functions of new market entry, knowledge management, performance, quality and impact assessment is highly desired
• Experience in building and maintaining automated dashboards to facilitate nimble performance tracking and coordination
• High EQ and excellent communication skills, from executive office level through to technical level, and who is adept at speaking to senior leadership, knows how to navigate ambiguous environments and is comfortable at managing up and beyond hierarchy  
• Direct experience working in LMICs is highly desired
• Experience in working in entrepreneurial and matrixed environments and who is comfortable working in ambiguity while closely collaborating with global functional and geographic teams
• A proven ability to build and inspire teams with an ability to cultivate shared vision and action to deliver exceptional objectives  
• Who commits to business objectives and pulls out the stops to make sure they are always met