Strategy and Governance Chief of Staff - Director

Key Requirements

• Executive leadership:Demonstrated ability to manage the operating rhythm of a COO organization — driving agendas, actions, and governance processes that enable efficient and transparent decision‑making.
• Organizational and stakeholder excellence:Strong influencing skills with senior stakeholders across businesses, regions, and functions; adept at managing sensitive and confidential matters with sound judgment and discretion.
• Structured delivery and prioritization:Exceptional ability to bring order and structure to ambiguity — balancing competing priorities, anticipating needs, and ensuring the COO’s focus stays on what matters most.
• Commercial and operational understanding:Solid grounding in banking, risk, finance, or transformation, enabling pragmatic assessment of issues and alignment with business performance goals.
• Team leadership and collaboration:Experience leading or coordinating multi‑functional teams and driving cross‑departmental initiatives with accountability and follow‑through.

To enable the success of senior executives by helping navigate complex challenges, make informed decisions and deliver against their strategic objectives.

• Strategic support to senior executives, such as the CEO or other top‑level leaders including assistance in the development and execution of in year and multi‑year business strategy, research, and analysis to support decision‑making and act as delegate for the senior executive in specific situations.
• Management of colleague engagement planning in line with the strategic direction, managing communication channels and ensuring effective coordination across different departments and teams.
• Management of key projects and strategic initiatives on behalf of senior executives, ensuring strategic projects are on track, monitoring of progress, and provision of regular updates to the executive team.
• Improvement of operational efficiency, alongside functional partners, within the organisation including the identification of areas for improvement, streamlining of processes, and implementation of consistently excellent best practices to enhance productivity and effectiveness.
• Development of performance reporting for key metrics that reinforce the strategic objectives of the division and support the external commitments made. Analyse and draw insight to drive performance. Involvement in aspects of financial analysis and budget management, including assistance in financial planning, forecasting, cost management and monitoring of financial performance against targets.
• Support to senior leadership to ensure appropriate resourcing across the business/function including planning and forecasting, partnering with HR to drive talent development and succession planning including the identification of high‑potential employees, provision of mentorship and guidance, and support to leadership development and diversity initiatives.
• Support to the senior executive with risk and control oversight, escalation, crisis management and risk mitigation, support the development of contingency plans, coordination of responses to emergencies, and ensure business continuity.
• Implementation of a robust governance framework which supports the board of directors, executive forums and governance committees through the preparation of board materials, organisation of meetings, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.

• To manage a business function, providing significant input to function wide strategic initiatives. Contribute to and influence policy and procedures for the function and plan, manage and consult on multiple complex and critical strategic projects, which may be business wide.
• They manage the direction of a large team or sub‑function, leading other people managers and embedding a performance culture aligned to the values of the business. Or for an individual contributor, they lead organisation wide projects and act as deep technical expert and thought leader, identifying new ways of working and collaborating cross functionally. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information…