Director, Product Operating Model & Agile Coaching Lead

If you’re passionate about helping people protect what matters most to them at a Fortune 100 company with nearly $70 billion in annual sales, as well as innovating and simplifying processes and operations to provide the best customer value, then Nationwide’s Property and Casualty team could be the place for you! At Nationwide®, “on your side” goes beyond just words. Our customers and partners are at the center of everything we do and we’re looking for associates who are passionate about delivering extraordinary care.

Director, Product Operating Model & Agile Coaching Lead

This position uses the Business Program Management job profile; however, its primary purpose is to lead the evolution of Personal Lines into a product platform operating model—including its funding approach, tooling, governance, roles, and ways of working—and enable its adoption.

The role leads the team of business squad agile coaches and is accountable for developing and maintaining the operating model playbook, role and practice standards, governance guidance, coaching approach, and maturity framework. It partners with Personal Lines leaders, Product Operations, Domains, Product Owners, squad leaders, Technology, and enabling functions to make the model clear, practical, and consistently applied across teams.

The role translates operating-model expectations into hands-on coaching and scalable capability-building for leaders, practitioners, and squads; identifies adoption barriers and cross-domain patterns; and uses feedback, maturity indicators, and delivery and outcome measures to recommend improvements. It develops the business squad agile coaches’ effectiveness and helps squads build the capability to sustain the model with decreasing coaching support. The role enables sound product and business decisions but does not assume business prioritization, replace the Product Owner, or take permanent ownership of squad delivery; its accountability is for the quality and evolution of the operating model and the coaching system that supports adoption.

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Job Description Summary

We are a versatile group of individuals, working together to meet the needs of our customers. We value knowledge, strong business savvy and contributing to a stellar team environment. If you thrive in a busy, engaging work environment, we want to know more about you!

As a Director, you'll lead the strategic alignment of major corporate programs and initiatives. We will count on you to have an end to end vantage point on business delivery. You will be responsible for setting and reviewing objectives, coordinating activities across projects and overseeing the integration and reuse of projects and results. You'll lead all aspects of multiple project teams and associates and be accountable for the overall outcome of programs that ultimately deliver expected value and business outcomes.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

Directs the evaluation of proposed business development efforts including the coordination of initial program/project proposals and charters. Determines and recommends to senior management if program/project aligns with the organization’s strategy and objectives.

Facilitates portfolio planning and partners with key stakeholders to establish a road-map aligned with the organization's vision and annual objectives. Drives the creation, development, presentation and approval of program, project and business case budgets and funding. Works with key customers in identifying program needs and leads program infrastructure, implementation and governance structure. Ensures the establishment of scope and priorities, management of risks/issues/dependencies, implementation of solutions and change management activities.

Prioritizes, approves and ensures the completion of new product development, design of new processes and adoption of new strategies and/or programs within time, budget and specification constraints. Provides a single point of contact integration for individual projects into larger program management on a corporate-wide basis.

Consults with leaders and assigned project teams to identify scope/specifications and business needs, writes proposals, prepares risk assessments and establishes budgets and timeframes for major programs and team based activities, with the goal of ensuring alignment with corporate strategy and objectives.

Builds strong working relationships with team members, matrix partners, sponsors and customers to aide in effective definition and execution of projects. Fosters trust that increases day-to-day decisioning and improving speed and quality of work

Leverages value chain thinking, ensuring that critical parties are engaged at the appropriate time and informed of all upstream/downstream impacts.

Collaborates with key stakeholders, leaders and partners to understand impediments and/or inefficiencies to improve overall efficiency and delivery capability of the team. Serves as a point of escalation.

Partners closely with Finance and Technology partners to oversee project/product financials.

Establishes and maintains a best in class Portfolio and Program Management practice that supports continuous planning and delivery flexibility with sustainable predictability. Establishes standard for project managers and oversees the development of tools and processes. Champions the process to ensure efficiency, effectiveness and consistency of execution.

Directs the development of business perspective work plans to determine needed resources to deliver program/project charters, requirements, user acceptance testing strategies, training and system implementation.

Monitors and assesses all projects and pivotal initiatives and communicates status to senior leadership.

Manages the interfaces between projects, acting as a liaison between project managers and directors, to ensure collaboration and coordination between business unit leadership, program/project development staff, senior management, Nationwide Technology, customers and if necessary, vendors and outside consultants.

Identifies gaps, overlaps, conflicts and timelines, as well as budgetary and resource barriers, which affect programs and projects individually and as a whole. Facilitates resolution, mitigation and appropriate elevation.

Leads a team of associates to deliver results by crafting team objectives tied to business objectives. Responsible for the management of associates including, performance management, salary planning and administration, development, workflow and organizational planning, hiring and placement. Recognizes team members' strengths, aligned to capability needs, resulting in strong delivery results. Facilitates an environment of inclusion that leverages diverse perspectives and talent. Ensures associates have the resources and guidance they need to deliver timely and relevant result.

Serves as a top professional/coach to others around delivering business outcomes, benefit realization, and delivery practices.

May perform other responsibilities as assigned.

Reporting Relationships: Reports to an executive; leads team of four or more associates.

Typical Skills and Experiences:

Education: Undergraduate degree required with studies in business, insurance or related field preferred. MBA or other graduate level education equivalent is desired.

License/Certification/Designation: Project Management Certification is strongly preferred. Industry designations such as CPCU, CLU and/or ChFC are highly desired.

Experience: Ten or more years of related project/program management experience along with experience leading others (directly or indirectly).

Knowledge, Abilities and Skills: Proven knowledge of project management tools, concepts and methodologies. Demonstrated proficiency in key competencies of effective program/project management. Ability to manage large, sophisticated programs/projects. Must have the ability to maintain focus on the holisti