Primary Duties & Responsibilities
Operational Excellence & Execution
- Drive accountability: Track and follow up on COO commitments, priorities, and deadlines across the function.
- Operational Cadence: Coordinate stand-ups, leadership team meetings, quarterly business reviews, and steering committees to ensure effective operations.
- Issue resolution: Surface bottlenecks and risks early, propose solutions, and coordinate cross-functional fixes. Cascade information, up, down and around the organization to ensure speed and a cohesive operating rhythm.
- Decision support: Ensure COO has the right briefings, data, analysis, and pre-reads to make timely, informed decisions.
- Strategic and Operational Planning: Collaborate with the Strategy Office and the Office of the CEO to align operational plans with the company's strategic vision. Ensure the COO is consistently informed about KPIs, progress, risks, and potential roadblocks.
- Budgeting and Financial Planning: Coordinating planning and budgeting processes, ensuring alignment with strategic priorities and operational goals.
Strategic Alignment & Prioritization
- Translate strategy to execution: DeconstructCOO's strategic goals into clear initiatives with milestones.
- Portfolio Management: Partner with cross-functional leaders to ensure team initiatives are sequenced, resourced, and delivering value. Facilitate functional Monthly Business Reviews (MBRs) to assess progress, align on priorities, and adjust strategies as needed to enhance overall portfolio performance.
- Clarity of Focus: Assist the COO in prioritizing high-impact initiatives by effectively evaluating and deprioritizing low-value tasks, ensuring sustained attention on the most critical priorities.
- Foresight & trends: Monitor tech/digital trends and competitors; brief COO on implications for strategy.
Leadership Team Effectiveness
- Team alignment: Facilitate COO leadership team effectiveness (e.g., offsites, operating norms, talent discussions).
- Information flow: Ensure the right information gets to and from the COO, reducing churn, while increasing speed and a cohesive operating rhythm.
- Talent lens: Partner with Sr. HRBP to assess talent readiness, succession, and leadership dynamics
- Culture Carrier: Reinforce the COO's leadership style and priorities across the organization. Lead change management efforts within the function to ensure smooth transitions and adoption of new processes, fostering a resilient and adaptive organizational culture amidst ongoing changes.
Stakeholder & Cross-Functional Management
- Enterprise connector: Coordinate with Finance, HR, Risk, Legal, and other functions to align Tech & Digital with enterprise priorities. Partner with other SLT Chiefs of Staff to coordinate and align strategic initiatives and key SLT priorities and decisions. Participate in weekly SLT COS meetings.
- Board Prep: Draft materials, talking points, and executive updates that showcase progress and challenges.
- External visibility: Support COO in thought leadership, vendor/partner relationships, and industry engagements.
Strategic Executive Support & Optimization
- Time optimization: Manage COO's calendar, ensuring the right balance of strategic vs. operational work.
- Voice amplification: Partner with HR and communications (all-hands, exec updates, keynotes) to keep messaging consistent.
- Trusted sounding board: Provide honest feedback, challenge assumptions, and offer alternative viewpoints.
Qualifications:
- Minimum of 12 years' business leadership experience, with proven leadership skills across diverse, cross-functional teams.
- Superior interpersonal skills to lead groups and build strong relationships at all levels.
- Extensive experience in strategic planning, portfolio and project management, and leading multiple complex projects with organization-wide impact.
- Strong business acumen and strategic thinking skills, with the ability to translate goals into actionable business plans.
- High integrity and discretion with confidential information.
- Strong organizational skills, capable of handling competing demands and working under tight deadlines.
- Proficiency in problem-solving, critical thinking, facilitation, and team-building skills.
- Demonstrated learning agility and the ability to identify future trends and practices.
- Demonstrated organizational agility to work across organizational boundaries, influence, and collaborate with all levels on solutions that benefit the organization.
- Interpersonal savvy and comfort interacting with and presenting to all levels of the organization, including senior leaders.
- High degree of self-motivation with leadership and initiative in sharing information, contributing towards group goals, and accepting responsibility for results.
- Proactive and an ability to anticipate needs for a range of broad / complex business problems and staying ahead of them; comfortable working in an ambiguous environment.
Compensation Range:
Pay Range - Start:
$149,380.00
Pay Range - End:
$277,420.00
Geographic Specific Pay Structure:
230 - Structure 110: 164,290.00 USD - 305,110.00 USD
230 - Structure 115: 171,780.00 USD - 319,020.00 USD
We believe in fairness and transparency. It's why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you're living in California, New York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more.
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Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer who welcomes and encourages diversity in the workforce. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.
FIND YOUR FUTURE
We're excited about the potential people bring to Northwestern Mutual. You can grow your career here while enjoying first-class perks, benefits, and our commitment to a culture of belonging.
- Flexible work schedules
- Concierge service
- Comprehensive benefits
- Employee resource groups
What the Team is Saying
What We Do
You’ll Like It Here
At Northwestern Mutual, we believe that our lives and our work matter. And that doing what’s right is good for everyone. We follow through by designing tech that improves the community and cultivating creative ways to make finance accessible anywhere. These guiding principles have allowed our company to grow for more than 160 years.
Here, you’ll be with a team who emphasizes integrity and prioritizes security to design experiences that better everyone. You’ll work in cross functional teams to create optimal solutions that are rooted in innovative strategy and thoughtful execution. And you’re provided development tools and opportunities to become a leader all with the support of a collaborative team. You’ll be surrounded in a culture that values innovation and works to always evolve to stay ahead of trends and client needs.
We are intentional in seeking out team members who will challenge us. Our employees choose us for the career opportunities, commitment to philanthropy and desire to have a meaningful impact in the lives of our clients. You have career passions and goals. We have ambition and opportunity for you to grow your future in tech. Discover today: https://careers.northwesternmutual.com/
Why Work With Us
We invest in our people. We know careers are about choices, so we provide intentional opportunity. Here you can build creative ways to make finance accessible anywhere and revolutionize traditional processes. As a mutual company, our focus is our people — whether professional development or investments in the community.
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Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
We offer a flexible, hybrid approach for our employees . Teams are in the office a few days a week and work from home the others.
