Senior Director, Strategic Leadership Team at Mercy Corps

The Program / Department Summary

The Strategic Leadership Team’s (SLT) experience, problem solving, and leadership skills support country teams, strategic programs, and organizational initiatives to achieve and maintain high performance. The Team is organized around two key priorities: 1) Support portfolio leadership to maximize program performance and quality and minimize adverse impacts of transitions on programs and teams; 2) Engage cross-organization teams and experiences to continuously improve quality implementation of strategic programs (including “Complex Programs”). The SLT works with the People Team to manage surge support talent at the program and portfolio level and provides additional process and management support to strategic programs and portfolios.

The Position

The Senior Director leads the SLT and ensures that the team and its functions are meeting performance expectations and organizational needs. The incumbent works closely with Regions, the Global Response Team (GRT), the People Team, and other units and departments to ensure that systems to identify and assign temporary leadership are in place, are streamlined, and are well-managed. The incumbent engages with the People Team to develop learning products for program and portfolio leaders and for team members undertaking other types of temporary leadership assignments and coordinates the development of program/ portfolio leadership effectiveness resources. The incumbent leads systems to rally all-of-organization efforts around a portfolio of the organization’s largest, highest-risk programs, ensuring the SLT is ready to provide or facilitate performance support where needed.

Please note that at the time of recruitment Mercy Corps is undergoing a redesign of the Programs Department structure. As such the incumbent must be flexible and adaptive as the role of the SLT evolves within an adjusted departmental structure, while maintaining the spirit of team’s role as described in this Position Description.

Essential Responsibilities

STRATEGY, VISION AND REPRESENTATION

• Elaborate an overall strategy and vision for the SLT. Consult with stakeholders to update and socialize the SLT’s strategy, work plans, and workflows regularly.
• Oversee the performance of the SLT and its responsiveness and effectiveness in meeting organizational needs; update work priorities and processes as needed to continuously improve.
• Direct and support team members sourced for temporary leadership roles in providing strategic support to countries, regions, and programs during key change moments.
• Collaborate with the Global Response Team (GRT) to coordinate surge support assignments and team formation during rapid-onset emergency responses.
• Collaborate with the People Team to ensure that systems for tracking talent and managing the Alumni Talent Pool are functioning smoothly and adapting as needed over time, as well as that deployment processes and systems for deployable or roving positions from various teams across the organization are managed consistently in a manner that is user-friendly for requesting teams.
• Collaborate with Regional and Country leadership to track leadership continuity and strategic program/ portfolio needs, and to plan proactively and accordingly.
• Work with the Learning & Leadership Team to ensure that learning offerings related to portfolio leadership effectiveness are complimentary to – and in some cases reduce the need for – leadership continuity assignments, while taking into consideration and drawing upon candidates from internal leadership development programs and pipelines.
• Develop and maintain productive relationships with organizational senior leadership and other internal constituencies.
• Contribute to overall Unit/ Department leadership and coordination.

LEADERSHIP CONTINUITY

• Develop and manage systems for facilitating leadership continuity at the global, regional, and country levels.
• Direct the assignment of Strategic Response Managers or other team members to meet leadership continuity needs at the program or portfolio level.
• Ensure that Strategic Response Managers or other team members continue to develop and utilize high-level program and portfolio leadership skills and share these skills and associated practices with counterparts.
• Work with the People Team, and with Programs and Operations teams that deploy temporary leadership in specific functional areas, to administer the organization’s Alumni Talent Pool and to develop and administer processes for full-time deployable team members.
• Contribute to the development of tools and systems to identify high-potential program/ portfolio leaders, provide professional development opportunities for these leaders, link these leaders to assignment opportunities and provide appropriate support to these leaders during their initial temporary leadership assignments.
• Facilitate the sourcing of existing team members for temporary leadership assignments where appropriate, ensuring that these systems reinforce a diverse leadership pipeline.
• Develop processes to interpret trends based on leadership continuity assignment feedback and after-action reviews, highlight these trends to organizational leadership, and suggest systems/ process/ leadership development adjustments as a result, with an eye towards strengthening overall organizational program and portfolio leadership capabilities.
• Identify and coordinate responses to specific program or portfolio leadership continuity challenges, with a focus on strategic programs or portfolios that are facing a high level of performance risk.
• As appropriate, serve in assigned leadership continuity roles directly, for up to 10 weeks per assignment. It is expected that the incumbent will be on assignment 30% of the time.

STRATEGIC/COMPLEX PROGRAMS

• Oversee the Complex Program process and improve its functionality over time. 
• Serve as Steering Committee (SC) Chair for selected Complex Programs (CP) or Complex Portfolios, while working to continuously improve the effectiveness of CP SCs writ large.
• Play a leading role in assigning SC Chairs for CPs and determining the roles and responsibilities of SC chairs and members, with an eye towards lines of accountability between global, regional, and country teams.
• Use the results of quarterly CP reports and occasional CP reviews to highlight trends, issues and successes to agency stakeholders and to inform course corrections, celebrate successes, or improve systems and processes as required.
• Ensure that other members of the SLT and the broader agency rally around support to Complex Programs, and that Complex Program SCs, guidelines, and start-up support processes are as effective as possible.
• Collaborate closely with the Program Standards Team to ensure that CP guidelines are well integrated with, and complementary to, the organization’s overall program management approach and requirements.
• Lead, or assign the leadership of, the coordination of support to CP (and in some cases Complex Portfolio) start-up, ensuring that each new CP receives a consistent level of support.
• Lead, or assign leadership of, the coordination of management responses to CPs that are facing planning or implementation challenges.
• Oversee the maintenance of CP guidelines so that agency systems for supporting CPs remain as effective as possible.
• Use lessons learned from CP portfolio management, and the performance of CPs, to work with stakeholders to improve the design and operations of future CPs.
• Apply similar processes and thinking to other strategic programs that may need additional organizational attention.

TEAM AND FUNCTIONAL MANAGEMENT

• Manage team members with information, tools and resources to improve performance & reach objectives.
• Supervise team members, with a focus on performance, “customer” service, and a team that is equipped to operate efficiently and globally while facilitating global networks.
• Promote accountability, communicate expectations, and provide constructive feedback informally and formally.
• Create and sustain a work environment of mutual trust and respect where team members strive to achieve excellence.
• Hire, orient and lead team members, as necessary, with strong emphasis on a culture of care during times of transition and Mercy Corps’ Core Behaviors.

Supervisory Responsibility

• The Strategic Leadership Team (Strategic Response Managers, Complex Program Process Manager, Director – Leadership Continuity & Success, Senior Project Manager, Director – Strategic Leadership; others as the team evolves).
• The Senior Director will have variable supervisory responsibility when deployed on specific assignments or special projects, which could include multiple teams, budgets, donors, program sectors, and implementation of all security protocols, or could include members from other HQ departments and teams.

Accountability

• Reports Directly To: VP, Program Performance and Quality* (*Please note that at the time of recruitment Mercy Corps is undergoing a redesign of the Programs Department structure. As such the successful candidate will need to be flexible and adaptable should supervisory lines shift).
• Works Directly With: Regional and Country Leadership, selected Program Leadership, People Team, Global Response Team, Program Standards Team, other departments/ units as required.

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Minimum Qualifications & Transferable Skills

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field. Advanced degree preferred.
• Minimum 10 years’ experience in humanitarian or development programming, including in direct program management and senior program and portfolio leadership roles.
• At least six years’ supervisory experience at the program and portfolio levels.
• Experience in insecure environments, including managing programs or teams in complex emergencies. 
• Knowledge of Mercy Corps processes, systems, and procedures is desirable.
• Knowledge of rules and regulations governing the compliance/regulatory management of grants from US Government, FCDO, EC, and other donors is an advantage.
• Experience effectively mentoring and training others, as well as experience facilitating a range of planning, team building, and program design events.
• Experience developing guidelines, procedures, and tools for use by a broad range of team members.
• Excellent oral and written English skills. Proficiency in French, Arabic, and/ or Spanish also preferred.