Director, Chief of Staff, Experience Design

Director, Chief of Staff, Experience Design

The Experience Design team at Capital One is at the forefront of enriching our customers’ digital and physical experiences and we are passionate about creating memorable, meaningful product experiences that build the Capital One brand with humanity and drive business advantage and innovation. We champion a thriving environment of collaboration, authenticity and healthy critique, in which we honor diversity of thought, create a culture of belonging, and elevate one another. If you’re a creative innovator who embraces an environment where you can experiment, learn, and change banking for good, we’d love to hear from you. 

Role Expectations 

The Chief of Staff role is largely about relationships. The Chief of Staff is a connector for everyone in the design organization as well as our business partners and stakeholders, and operates as a strategic partner for the Design Leader and their Senior Leadership team. You’re great at balancing the big picture, thinking strategically while managing tactical execution, and recognizing overlaps in plans, processes, people, and many other facets of a functioning organization to drive efficiency and excellence. You have strong business acumen and understand how design drives business impact, and excel at both written and oral communications across all levels of seniority. You have access to people and data at all levels and disciplines and keep at least one ear and one eye open to the overall health of the organization while maintaining discretion at all times. 

As the Chief of Staff, your primary responsibility will be to enable a high performing Senior Leadership team and wider design organization in direct collaboration with design leadership and our business partners. This role includes oversight of initiatives where central coordination and aligning with partners across the line of business and the enterprise are key for well-managed delivery, including leadership team routines, large-format and executive meetings/events, recognition programs, performance management, team communications support, change management and strategy implementation.

What you’ll do:

• Serve as a trusted advisor, confidential thought partner, and act as a sounding board to the Design Leader and their Senior Leadership Team

• Develop and iterate management practices (Senior Leadership Team and Organization) to enable the transparency, efficiency and effectiveness of our organization

• Facilitate defining business priorities and drive goal setting effort for the organization, inclusive of cascading information through the organization

• Counseling leadership team on organizational design and change management

• Ensure the team’s time is focused on the highest leverage activities related to business priorities and impact

• Evangelizing the impact of design with business partners by embracing and advocating for an experience design mindset

• Managing business critical relationships on behalf of senior leadership, and representing senior leadership accordingly in non-executive meetings

• Prepare agendas, coordinate materials, facilitate management practices

• Shepherd Strategic Planning cycle (quarterly/annual)

• Coordinate regular business reviews of key experience investments and initiatives

• Engage in organizational design including headcount estimation, budgeting, and planning 

• Develop and execute the Communications Strategy 

• Be eyes and ears for the Senior Leadership team with respect to organizational health, focusing on morale, attrition, and unspoken feedback

• Manage difficult situations and hard conversations while showing a high level of discretion, professional maturity, resilience, and adaptability

• Handle oversight of special projects that don’t fit into traditional workstreams

Here are some of the expected competencies for this role:

• Operational Expertise: Leverage established expertise and leadership in operations to elevate the quality and maturity of the design practice at Capital One

• Leadership: Create conditions for a positive and inclusive team environment and set a vision for an inclusive, collaborative culture that makes associates throughout the organization feel valued and heard

• Human-Centered: Champion voices of both customers and partners, modeling the mindset that business and customer outcomes are not distinct but complementary, ultimately resulting in experiences that exceed baseline customer needs and expectations

• Business-Focused: Demonstrate expert knowledge of products, processes, our customers, competitors and industry market trends, applying relevant insight