Assistant Director Change Management

Northwestern Mutual•Milwaukee, WI

3d•Onsite

About The Position

This person will lead large, complex change management efforts. Focused on the people side of change and influencing behavior, including efforts with significant people, processes, technology, culture, and/or behavior implications, to realize business outcomes and benefits. Architects integrated change strategies to optimize the change experience across large stakeholder groups. Partners with business leaders to ensure change strategies align with the business strategy and vision. Coordinates implementation of change execution strategies in coordination with leaders, stakeholders, sponsors, and project teams. Ensures change plans and strategies work towards their goals and benefits.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Business, Human Resources, Communication, or a related field.
Minimum of 8 years of relevant professional experience, with at least 4 years’ experience leading large change management efforts.
Specialized understanding of how people go through change and the change process.
Experience and knowledge of change management principles and methodologies, particularly the LaMarsh Managed Change methodology adopted at NM.
Familiarity with project management approaches, tools, and phases of the project lifecycle.
Ability to work effectively at all levels of the organization and influence others, including influencing without formal authority and influencing executive leadership, toward a common vision.
Strategic and organizational agility, and enterprise thinking.
Self-starter mentality with the ability to lead in new and ambiguous situations.
Openminded and intellectual curiosity to learn the intricacies of the Wealth and Investment Management business, its products, and its value proposition to advisors and NM clients.
Must be a team player and able to work with and through others.
Outstanding communication skills both written and verbal.
Excellent active listening, root cause identification and interpersonal skills.

Responsibilities

Applies NM change methodology and process to deliver the people side of change that is required to achieve our desired business outcomes.
Identify potential people-related risks and anticipated points of resistance and develop and recommend specific plans to mitigate or address the concerns.
Provide insight to project and senior leaders about the potential impact of decisions on the effectiveness of overall change strategy.
Develop and implement integrated change strategies that promote adoption and optimize business benefits across a broad portfolio of change initiatives that impact one or more large stakeholder groups.
Ensure coordinated delivery to optimize the change experience for affected stakeholder groups.
Manage and influence potential impact of changes to people, process, technology, organization, and culture.
Partner with business leadership across multiple departments and functions to craft planning and program delivery approaches that promote user centric business solutions and ensure change strategies align with the business strategy and vision.
Create and build efficient change management structures that support an integrated delivery approach and provide direction and oversight to one or more change teams to ensure predictable execution and realization of benefits.
Influence business sponsors and change teams to create integrated deployment strategies and plans.
Educate, influence, align, and mentor senior business leaders and project teams to create and implement effective change strategies and plans.
Influence change execution strategy and approach.
In partnership with the enterprise change COE, be an active member of the change community to advance change competencies of the company.
Adopt, integrate, and promote common NM enterprise-wide change process, methodology and language.
Create, recommend, and implement measurement systems for change success, e.g., quality of user experience, adoption, utilization, performance standards, etc.
Promote and advocate for the practice of organization change management throughout the enterprise, including seeking and applying external perspective and benchmarking change practices.