The Watershed Way

In today’s world, organizations, communities, and even societies struggle to identify shared opportunities and negotiate sustained outcomes successfully. Often the challenges appear too complex and insurmountably frustrating. As a result, these challenges remain unsolved as communities and organizations default toward approaches that are slow, expensive, and adversarial, resulting in a diminished probability of reaching a good outcome.

Watershed Partners exists to create space for a wide variety of participants to come together to create shared learning, form new individual and collective identities and develop new and innovative solutions. We offer approaches that profoundly change our clients’ way of understanding the systems they live and work in and the perspectives held in existing mental models and world views. Together, we shape outcomes that can have long-lasting and transformative impacts on individual people, their organizations and communities, and quite possibly the world.

Your work with Watershed will put you at the centre of the world’s most intractable problems. You will find yourself in rooms with communities that have been in conflict for centuries, with organizations that have never previously seen themselves as systems thinkers or collaborators, and with societies who are coming together to seek solutions to the world’s toughest economic, social and political challenges.

Your Role

The Engagement Director is responsible for the overall management of a portfolio of projects being undertaken in one of our local markets. In partnership with the Executive Lead, you will coordinate all project-related activities, provide overall financial and administrative oversight to the deliverables, and monitor, report and evaluate all project activities and outcomes. As soon as market development or project opportunities are identified, you will be on the ground ensuring that successful project outcomes are a priority and contracts and project proposals are crafted to support a strong client relationship based on shared expectations and transparent accountability. From there, you will lead the multiple project teams to ensure that deliverables are implemented on time, on budget and in a manner that exceeds the client’s expectations and other members of the delivery team across Watershed.

Your Resume

• A minimum of 10 years’ experience managing multiple large projects (3-5 of which should be in managing a portfolio of projects in a complex dynamic environment)
• Your PMP designation supplements a related degree in business, finance or other related disciplines
• You have demonstrated exceptional change leadership skills
• You are known to be extremely results-focused while maintaining good collaborative working relationships with the people you work with
• You are also known for partnering with clients in a way that holds their desired outcomes sacred while balancing project control and accountability for delivery

What you Offer

Exceptional knowledge of Project Management processes, tools and technologies: As you work with the team to deliver a Watershed Project (Diagnose, Define, Co-Design, Co-create and Convene), you demonstrate a seasoned understanding of project delivery concepts and tools and can select and implement the right approach at the right time.

Ability to contract and mobilize multiple complex projects: You have the demonstrated ability to work with the delivery team to build a contract that will ensure the critical terms and project elements are covered. You translate those contracted terms into structures, deliver the intended outcomes and provide oversight for all activities, resources and deliverables.

Ability to manage complexities and challenges: You anticipate project challenges and establish mitigation strategies. You know when and how to ask for support and appropriately involve others in the hierarchy to help you solve issues. You manage problems and crises in a way that instills calm and inspires team and client confidence.

Strong communications and relationship management skills: You instill credibility and legitimacy in your relationships with clients. You connect with people around you by listening to their needs and engaging them in a way that they see those needs being met. You can deliver tough messages in a way that preserves the relationship but results in changed behaviours or differences in approaches. You are equally comfortable and adept at connecting with people in short hallway conversations or big boardroom presentations. You also can communicate clearly and influentially in writing.

People Development Skills: You are known as a great talent manager. You play an active role in recruitment and hiring, and you are skilled at matching people to the roles you need them to play. You have demonstrated a capacity to lead and motivate others in a way that triggers confidence and allows them to deliver great results. You co-create clear objectives with your teams, provide concrete and constructive feedback and coach them to not only secure immediate results but develop their skills so they can make an even greater contribution in future.

Strong Business Development skills: You understand the business drivers needed to build and sustain an effective business and you create and execute business plans with ease. You actively partner with other leaders in the company to build the capability necessary to feed the short and long terms sales cycles. You offer expertise and leadership that will contribute to the company’s company’s overall value proposition.

Great Team Skills: You are both a team leader and a team player. You work with others to create an effective working environment and contribute positively to the organization’s culture. You contribute to knowledge sharing and capture within the team. You know how and when to step in and lead the team. You are equally comfortable defining your role as a member in support of others, actively connecting with others to understand their needs and sharing your knowledge and expertise in ways that ensure everyone around you can succeed.

Cultural Agility: You have a demonstrated ability to quickly, comfortably, and successfully work in cross-cultural and international environments.

Resilience: You will work in a very dynamic environment. The people we work with are facing the most challenging problems that the world offers. It’s emotional work and will require you to be extremely self-aware and self-regulating. Success in this environment will come with the ability to cope effectively with the stress and challenges present when working with other people who may be learning to cope with what’s in front of them.

What we Offer in Return

• The opportunity to focus your work on transforming systems to enable biosphere integrity and build new models for working, thinking, living and being.
• The chance to be an early joiner in a young company that’s rapidly growing into a unique position where we can enable real progressive change in the world.
• A work environment where you can be your whole and honest self. We don’t hide behind corporate facades.
• Significant opportunities for growth and development and financial support for learning and development for people who demonstrate a long term commitment to the organization.
• Performance-Based Reward structures that are designed in the context of mutually agreed measures.
• A generous home office allowance to help enable you to do your best work, wherever that may be.
• Support for rest and rejuvenation through flexible work arrangements as well as paid vacation up to 3 weeks per year. In addition, the Company is closed for two weeks in December/January of each year, during which time you will be paid for an additional 2 weeks to enjoy the holiday season.
• Extended medical and dental benefits as well as access to Life Insurance and coverage for Critical Illness and Long-Term Disability.

Location Remote – Canada

Interested in further exploring this opportunity? Email us at careers@watershed.co with your resume and cover letter