Officer, Strategy & Impact at Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa

Role Purpose

• The purpose of the Strategy and Impact function is in service of quality & performance within the Opportunity Model and will be enabled by a dynamic, cohesive, and right-sized approach to strategy development and renewal. Each component of the model—Opportunities, Core Partner Allocations, and Urgent Capital Allocations—will have a bespoke strategy setting and renewal process and approach to monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) plans based on the purpose and goals of each allocation. A dedicated Strategy & Impact unit will ensure a consistent and unified approach to strategy across the organization.

The Officer, Strategy & Impact Will Help Provide:

• Strong Strategy Support for the Opportunity Model: they will serve as a focal point for anyone pursuing an Opportunity to provide guidance and support and will have access to outsourced support for strategy support to ensure that all ideas can develop into full Opportunities
• Standard Setting & Overview: Based on clear benchmarks and expectations developed by the unit, the officer will help translate these requirements into services that can help OSF staff understand what is required for strategy inputs, MEL, data validity, etc., to conduct oversight where necessary. The officer will help populate and ensure data consistency for dashboards and other analytic products that show the whole of work across the organization
• Rigorous Examination: the officer will maintain knowledge of and relationships with outsourced capacities needed to ensure highest quality of thinking is available to the network in strategy pursuit. They will help provide rigorous feedback to ensure adherence to standards

Key Responsibilities
As Officer of Strategy and Impact, you will:

• Support with development, implementation, and monitoring of day-to-day tasks that ensure that Strategy & Impact helps catalyze and maintain the model with strong strategies for Opportunities that are based on impact and promising ideas on the frontiers of systems change
• Support the provision of services and guidance to the network that allows OSF to unleash potential and action the new vision to ensure the most competitive ideas succeed
• Provide individual support for Opportunity development; it will also provide support for Core Partner, Urgent Capital, and embedded functions.
• Promote and support adherence to standards, criteria, and guidelines, including on MEL
• Be conversant in dashboards and other analytic products that the Strategy and Impact unit use to show cohesion, saturation, and innovation for the enterprise
• Work as a trusted partner to all parts of the network to ensure fidelity to the model, rigorous assessment of strategies, consistent support to teams that need strategy and impact support, and that OSF is flexible and capable of adapting and shifting—including based on effective learning-derived information

People Responsibilities (Total Team/DRs)
None
Key internal relationships

• Directors, Officers, Operations

Key external relationships

• Strategy and impact leaders outside of OSF, including on foresight, MEL, complexity, systems change, consultants, etc., inside and outside of philanthropy

Qualifications
Essential:

• Prefer experience in lieu of qualifications

Desirable:

• University degree

Essential:
Experience

• Substantial experience working on developing strategies and designing and managing cross-department, cross-programs, or similarly complex projects

Desirable:

• Worked with a variety of sectors - public, private and NGO stakeholders
• Building and maintaining networks of stakeholders related to varied strategy topics
• Work with consultants, researchers, writers, and other sectors, including for contracting and budgeting purposes

Competencies
Functional Competencies:

• Demonstrated effective time management, including with multiple stakeholders or other types of complex coordination
• Ability to generate, capture and organize information and knowledge, especially on topics of strategy development, foresight, analysis, and monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL)
• Ability to take decisions and directions and convert tasks into consistent project planning
• Skilled in drawing out patterns and communicating why the patterns are important for strategy, analysis, and MEL
• Experience in budgeting, strategic analysis, and financial planning
• Demonstrated record of success with teamwork and delegating tasks
• Clear written communication and ability to edit with clarity and timeliness

Personal Competencies:

• Advancing Diversity & Inclusion involves encouraging, respecting and seeking out diverse viewpoints and perspectives, ensuring everyone has an equal voice, and building workgroups that are broadly inclusive to support effective decision making and cultural transformation across the organization
• Looks outside OSF to stay relevant and adapts to changes in field(s) of expertise. Uses external networks to achieve positive outcomes for OSF
• Establishes goals, plans for contingencies, readjusts where appropriate, and takes responsibility delivering outcomes that have a positive impact. Balances risk/reward, and intellectual curiosity with pragmatism to get things done
• Encourages and seeks out innovative solutions and brings people on a journey constructively and empathetically
• Makes the best possible judgements based on financial and time availability
• Considers multiple options to achieve long-range goals, appropriately balancing risk and reward, selecting the best strategies for success
• Builds collaborative relationships inside OSF through the understanding and development of other's and own ideas. Uses appropriate means & tone of communication to convey messages, seeks input from others and ensures understanding

Languages:

• An excellent knowledge of English.
• Knowledge of other languages would be an asset