- Large program experience: has worked within a complex, multi-workstream program with significant interdependencies.
- Cross functional leadership: comfortable working across business, tech, vendors/consultants, change, risk, etc., rather than managing a single isolated team.
- Stakeholder management: can navigate different levels of leadership, functional leads, SMEs, and partners and knows when/how to escalate.
- Dependency management: understands how their workstream connects to others and proactively identifies upstream/downstream impacts.
- Strong planning and organization: can translate a large body of work into a clear plan, milestones, owners, dependencies, and next steps.
- Risk and issue management: can identify risks early, drive mitigation, distinguish a risk from an issue/blocker, and elevate what needs leadership attention.
- Comfort with ambiguity (big one): doesn't need everything perfectly defined before moving work forward and can bring structure to evolving work.
- Strong communication: able to synthesize complex info, facilitate meetings, drive decisions, and communicate status clearly and concisely.
- Ownership/proactive leadership: doesn't just track actions, actually drives the work and follows through to resolution.
- Nice to have: Transformation/Coupa implementation experience.