Cross-Divisional Programme Leadership

The delivery centre serves brands across a global industrial group. Some programmes go well beyond a single team: brand work that involves design, IT and executive stakeholders across several divisions. One of them, a group-wide brand transformation, was the most complex cross-functional project in the studio's history.

Cross-divisional work brings groups together that don't usually work together, with different priorities and conflicting views on how to proceed.

These were high-visibility programmes involving executive stakeholders across several divisions.

On two cross-divisional programmes, I served as the central coordination point across 21 stakeholders. On the group-wide brand transformation, I was the central point of contact for all stakeholders and for the delivery team.

With 21 stakeholders, the hard part was alignment: gathering everyone's feedback together and holding all parties to the same deadlines.

Ran alignment workshops to bring the groups to a shared direction; resolved conflicts between parties as they surfaced; kept all parties aligned through delivery.

Put structure around the programme: one point of contact for stakeholders and the team, feedback gathered together rather than piecemeal, and deadlines every party aligned to.

Stakeholders and communication: workshops, direct conflict resolution and central coordination across 21 stakeholders. Governance, risks, dependencies and change: aligning 21 stakeholders to one set of deadlines was the central risk; I managed it by bringing feedback together in one place and keeping every party aligned to the agreed dates.