Global Strategy & Transformation Practice Lead - Digital Advisory at Wood PLC in Houston, Texas

Job Description:

JOB DESCRIPTION



Wood is looking for an experienced Practice Lead to head up the Global Strategy & Transformation Practice within our Digital Advisory business, a key part of our holistic Consulting offering. Digital Advisory helps clients develop, de-risk and sustain value from strategic transformation initiatives through pragmatic, operationally literate digitalization, asset management and operations excellence advisory services & tools. We focus on the full asset lifecycle: leveraging digital to optimize CAPEX, plan early for digital to achieve value in OPEX, and apply digital to optimize OPEX.

We are looking for motivated, growth-focused individuals who thrive on working closely with clients and our best global business, who are digital and domain experts in asset intensive industries, possess outstanding stakeholder engagement and change management skills, and hold and nourish multi-tiered client relationships, to help our clients realize value from digitalization and digital-led decarbonization in the energy, materials and life science sectors.

The ideal candidate has a broad geographical and multi sector experience, combined with industry and domain credibility, working with multiple stakeholders to achieve tangible results. The role requires being able to readily engage with clients to understand their problems and - through the application of Design Thinking principles and Wood's deep domain expertise, combined with a clear understanding of today's digital and technology landscape - show how Wood can solve these problems to drive sustainable client value. The role will be the voice of the client and a constant advocate for Wood.

This candidate will be responsible for the operational leadership of the global team, including project execution and resourcing, whilst playing a key and significant role in business acquisition together with the Digital Technology and Growth & Development groups at Wood. Our ideal candidate is self-driven and with a demonstrated track record of winning work for themselves and their teams, across a wide client portfolio.

The individual will manage communication upwards in the organization, with other key stakeholders across both Wood and its Partners, and the sales and marketing teams to share the vision and roadmap for the Strategy & Transformation group. The role will be responsible for collecting and prioritizing business and market requirements, communicating with domain experts, technology owners / partners and with an input into the wider Consulting strategy.

The ideal candidate should have previous experience with delivering digitalization strategies and/or operational excellence outcomes for clients in asset-intensive industries, preferably for multiple sectors and numerous geographic regions, with the goal of enabling sustainable energy transition and decarbonization outcomes for both new and existing assets.

In-depth knowledge of the market, market trends, technology landscape, organizational transformation approaches, and change management techniques are key skills. The ability to build trusted relationships across all levels of client organizations, to communicate with potential customers regarding their assets/systems/processes and how our services, combined with partner offerings, would deliver value to them, are essential requirements of this role.



RESPONSIBILITIES



Primary responsibilities:

• You will typically program manage or lead project teams of business, digital and deep domain experts focusing on developing a clear understanding of the client problem, formulating an agile and inclusive execution approach, and rapid and sustained value delivery in asset management, digitalization, decarbonization, automation and system integration, and asset operations (operations planning and operations excellence).
• You will be the custodian of the customer vision and have Customer Success as your key driver.
• You will lead the day-to-day agile execution of client project while guiding and developing individual team members, and actively seeking opportunities to deliver more client value and grow the opportunity for Wood.
• Driving business growth in line with targets set for the Digital Advisory group in Digital Operations and wider Digital Consulting
• Responsible for the global Strategy & Transformation (S&T) team performance against Balanced Scorecard KPIs
• Ensure projects are delivered to industry leading best-in-class standards whilst delivering target margins.
• Strategic resourcing of the S&T team globally, with particular focus on resourcing of key delivery centers
• Working closely with associated managers across Digital Operations and Digital Consulting
• Engaging with key stakeholders across Wood (Project, Operations and Consulting BUs) and Partners
• Lead key account sales and marketing efforts, for example, client meetings, demonstrations, conferences, in conjunction with the Growth & Development and Digital Technology groups
• Develop global/regional pricing models for the Strategy & Transformation services, leveraging Global Execution Centers where it makes sense.
• Technical and business representation of relevant services in conferences and/or lead Industry Panels, whitepapers, and publications

• Is a champion and role model for ethical behavior and compliance with applicable laws and policies
• Ensure delivery maintains a continued alignment with overall corporate policy, strategy and direction
• Responsive to customer needs whilst ensuring the Company operates with the utmost integrity, in line with Code of Conduct, Company values and all applicable laws and policies
• Facilitate open and effective communication to optimize delivery of objectives, maximize team performance and achieve continuous performance improvement, working closely with other areas of operation out with assigned country/region to promote and enhance collaboration
• Generate team spirit, enthusiasm and passion and pursue the eradication of unproductive practices and negative mind-sets to create a vibrant culture of positive thinking and attitudes
• Overall accountability for effective recruitment, selection and retention of talent within the Strategy & Transformation group
• Identify and support development of talent, effective performance and capability management of teams and direct reports, dealing with underperformance in a prompt, professional manner
• Responsible for ensuring employees within remit are competent to carry out assigned duties
• Passionately pursue and support, demonstrate and embed company values

• Engineering or related professional degree with consistent outstanding academic record; advanced degree and MBA is preferred
• 25+ years of highly relevant experience in the energy, materials and decarbonization sectors including at least 5 years in a Strategy & Transformation advisory / consulting leadership role
• Previous general advisory or consulting experience, including change management advisory and implementation, focused on asset-intensive industries
• Deep expertise in the energy and minerals industries as well as solid functional knowledge including but not limited to digital transformation, strategy, business development, energy, supply chain, project management, marketing and sales, etc.
• Exceptional problem-solving skills, and a champion of Design Thinking
• Demonstrated leadership ability in a team environment
• Ability to take initiative, break new ground, create opportunities for others and take personal risks as seen through leadership roles in work environment and extracurricular activities
• Ability to work effectively with people at all levels in an organization
• Highly networked, with a demonstrated portfolio of key industry business relationships that directly lead to business growth opportunities
• Ability to leverage those industry relationships to develop and secure business for the team and pull-through business for adjacent teams
• An expert communicator, with a high degree of emotional intelligence and influencing skills
• Advanced practitioner of Agile project delivery methodologies in an Advisory or Consultancy context
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Proposal / projects costing experience.
• Strong understanding of the relevant sector technology and market trends

• Strong influencer, negotiator and mediator
• Flexible to respond and adapt to changing internal and external context
• Decisive, with ability to make decisions and follow through, ensuring learnings are captured
• Exceptional communicator both verbally and written
• Strong team builder, listens to needs of team, and capable of identifying and adopting best practices to engender a spirit of cooperation and energize people towards optimum performance
• Pragmatic in approach with a strong commercial bias and ability to balance commercial nous with operational excellence
• Safety focused with an uncompromising approach to risk management. Places the welfare of both internal and customer employees at the top of the agenda
• Customer focused - develops sincere and open relationships with customers, current and potential; listens to customer needs and constantly striving to exceed expectations and add value
• Entrepreneurial approach - ability to identify opportunities
• Flexible to respond in agile ways to changing customer needs
• Ability to make decisions and follow through, ensuring learnings are captured
• A highly motivated self-starter, who can self-direct when required, able to use own initiative and have autonomy to make appropriate decisions but also know when escalation is required
• Critical thinker with problem solving abilities