Change and Adoption Lead, Transformation Office

BDO USA • Chicago, IL

3d • $135,000 - $220,000

About The Position

The Change and Adoption Lead is responsible for the enterprise change, enablement, adoption, and deployment strategy across the Transformation Office portfolio. This role sets the strategic direction for how transformation is introduced, understood, adopted, reinforced, deployed, and sustained across the organization. The position ensures that every approved initiative includes a credible change strategy, stakeholder-engagement model, readiness approach, deployment plan, enablement framework, adoption measures, and sustainment path before the work is considered successful.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree required, focus in in Business Administration, Management, Finance, Organizational Leadership, Information Systems, or Strategy, preferred.
• Master’s degree in Business Administration, Management, Organizational Leadership, or Strategy, preferred.
• Eight (8) years of experience leading enterprise change, adoption, readiness, deployment, or organizational transformation in a complex matrixed environment, required.
• Experience building change methodologies, playbooks, tools, governance routines, and enterprise standards preferred.
• Experience advising senior executives and sponsors on change risk, organizational readiness, adoption strategy, and transformation capacity, preferred.
• Experience applying knowledge of change management to drive stakeholder engagement, leader activation, communications strategy, learning integration, adoption measurement, and sustainment of change, preferred.
• Project Management Professional (PMP), preferred.
• Certified Change Management Professional (CCMP), preferred.
• APMG Change Management Practitioner, preferred.
• Prosci Change Management certification, preferred.
• Microsoft Office, required.
• Portfolio management or project management software, required.
• Dashboard and reporting tools, preferred.
• Financial planning and analysis software, preferred.
• Ability to translate business, technology, process, and operating-model changes into practical role-based impacts and adoption plans.
• Strong facilitation, influence, executive communication, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Experience leading or coaching change resources across multiple initiatives.
• Ability to operate strategically while ensuring practical execution details are complete.
• Sound judgment regarding sequencing, organizational capacity, sensitive messaging, and readiness risks.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor’s degree focus in Business Administration, Management, Finance, Organizational Leadership, Information Systems, or Strategy.
• Master’s degree in Business Administration, Management, Organizational Leadership, or Strategy.
• Experience building change methodologies, playbooks, tools, governance routines, and enterprise standards.
• Experience advising senior executives and sponsors on change risk, organizational readiness, adoption strategy, and transformation capacity.
• Experience applying knowledge of change management to drive stakeholder engagement, leader activation, communications strategy, learning integration, adoption measurement, and sustainment of change.
• Project Management Professional (PMP).
• Certified Change Management Professional (CCMP).
• APMG Change Management Practitioner.
• Prosci Change Management certification.
• Dashboard and reporting tools.
• Financial planning and analysis software.

Responsibilities

• Defines the enterprise change, adoption, enablement, and deployment strategy for the Transformation Office portfolio.
• Establishes the standards, methods, tools, and minimum expectations for change planning across all Transformation Office initiatives.
• Translates enterprise transformation priorities into stakeholder-specific change approaches that support understanding, readiness, behavior change, and sustained adoption.
• Ensures change strategy influences initiative scope, sequencing, governance, resource planning, communications, training, deployment timing, and handoff criteria.
• Identifies where the cumulative volume of transformation creates organizational fatigue, adoption risk, leadership overload, or conflicting messages.
• Advises the National Managing Principal, Transformation Office, and executive sponsors on the organization’s ability to absorb planned changes.
• Establishes governance routines that make change readiness, adoption risk, stakeholder impact, deployment complexity, and sustainment visible to executive sponsors.
• Advises the Managing Director and executive sponsors on change implications of portfolio sequencing, launch timing, resource constraints, and competing enterprise messages.
• Defines escalation paths for unresolved adoption risks, leader alignment gaps, readiness concerns, and deployment blockers.
• Ensures executive governance discussions include change capacity, leadership commitment, adoption evidence, and business readiness.
• Prepares executive-level change recommendations, risk summaries, and decision points for portfolio and steering committee forums.
• Defines enterprise stakeholder-segment standards, including sponsors, business owners, change champions, impacted leaders, practitioners, support teams, and affected end users.
• Develops leader activation strategies that clarify what leaders must know, say, reinforce, model, and measure.
• Equips sponsors and business owners to visibly own changes rather than relying on the Transformation Office to drive adoption alone.
• Identifies stakeholder resistance, misalignment, competing priorities, and readiness gaps early enough to adjust plans.
• Creates feedback loops that capture field sentiment, operational concerns, and practical adoption barriers.
• Defines readiness criteria required before major milestones, pilots, launches, deployments, and operational handoffs.
• Requires initiative-level change plans to include impact assessments, communications needs, enablement requirements, adoption measures, reinforcement actions, and sustainment ownership.
• Partners with Analytics and Reporting to build adoption scorecards and readiness views for leadership review.
• Distinguishes between awareness, training completion, initial use, behavior change, operational adoption, and sustained performance.
• Uses adoption evidence to recommend whether initiatives should proceed, pause, adjust, or receive targeted reinforcement.
• Defines the change requirements that should inform communications, learning, leader toolkits, job aids, office hours, support models, and deployment materials.
• Partners with the Enablement / Communications Partner to ensure messaging is timely, accurate, audience-specific, and connected to required behavior or process changes.
• Partners with Learning, Technology, and functional subject-matter experts to ensure enablement is practical, role-based, and tied to the future-state operating model.
• Ensures communications and enablement are sequenced with readiness, deployment, and adoption milestones.
• Identifies where additional training, reinforcement, leader support, or stakeholder engagement is needed to close adoption gaps.
• Builds and maintains the Transformation Office change and adoption methodology, templates, playbooks, and quality standards.
• Provides direction, coaching, and quality review to Change and Adoption Leads assigned to specific initiatives.
• Ensures change resources apply consistent methods while tailoring approaches to each initiative’s size, complexity, audience, and risk profile.
• Identifies capability gaps across the change portfolio and recommend staffing, secondment, or surge-capacity options.
• Promotes continuous improvement by capturing lessons learned and incorporating them into future change practices.
• Defines the adoption and readiness evidence required before an initiative transitions to business-as-usual ownership.
• Confirms reinforcement ownership, operating routines, role expectations, support channels, and success measures are assigned to the receiving business.
• Ensures operational handoff packages include change risks, adoption results, unresolved barriers, sustainment actions, and owner accountability.
• Supports post-transition reviews to determine whether adoption is holding and whether additional reinforcement is required.
• Escalates situations where the business is not prepared to sustain the future-state model.
• Other duties as required.

Benefits

• ESOP company, offering participants a stake in the firm’s success through beneficial ownership and a unique opportunity to enhance their financial well-being.
• Comprehensive compensation and Total Rewards benefits offerings.
• BDO Total Rewards encompass more than traditional benefits.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior