Managerial Consultant III, Business Optimization and Redesign

Overview:

Business Optimization & Redesign (“O&R”) is a new department within Kaiser Permanente. Reporting directly to the CEO, O&R’s focus is to accelerate Kaiser Permanente’s path to more affordable, patient-centered healthcare . As a member of the team, you’ll play a crucial role by applying and honing skills in strategic business consulting, creative operating model and solution design, disciplined program execution and complex organizational change management.

While our consulting team includes professionals at different experience levels from Consulting Analysts to Principal Consultants, we have a flat internal hierarchy and all share equal expectations to ask questions, contribute ideas and constantly learn. O&R values diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

Job Summary:

Serves as a consultant to ensure the alignment, buy-in, and coordination of diverse stakeholders to drive the implementation of strategic business initiatives and projects/programs across one or more functional tracks or workstreams. Contributes to business strategy, organizational alignment, and prioritization of business initiatives. Leads the work of project/program team members by requesting and coordinating internal and/or external resources. Develops and implements business initiatives, systems, and/or processes to a desired future state. Manages moderately complex, cross-functional projects/programs, and proactively monitors and identifies client, project, program, and/or business risks. Participates in and may lead change management plans associated with business initiatives. Performs assessments of strategic performance metrics to support business initiatives. Supports vendor management as required. Monitors compliance of work activities by ensuring business plans and team members adhere to relevant policies and procedures.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Pursues effective relationships with others by proactively providing resources, information, advice, and expertise with coworkers and members. Listens to, seeks, and addresses performance feedback; provides mentoring to team members. Pursues self-development; creates plans and takes action to capitalize on strengths and develop weaknesses; influences others through technical explanations and examples. Adapts to and learns from change, challenges, and feedback; demonstrates flexibility in approaches to work; helps others adapt to new tasks and processes. Supports and responds to the needs of others to support a business outcome.
• Completes work assignments autonomously by applying up-to-date expertise in subject area to generate creative solutions; ensures all procedures and policies are followed; leverages an understanding of data and resources to support projects or initiatives. Collaborates cross-functionally to solve business problems; escalates issues or risks as appropriate; communicates progress and information. Supports, identifies, and monitors priorities, deadlines, and expectations. Identifies, speaks up, and implements ways to address improvement opportunities for team.
• Serves as a consultant to ensure the alignment, buy-in, and coordination of diverse stakeholders to drive the implementation of strategic business initiatives and projects/programs across one or more functional tracks or workstreams by identifying and ensuring representation and inclusion of appropriate stakeholders; building rapport and partnerships with stakeholder teams, third party vendors, and senior management; working with stakeholders to develop goals and set the prioritization of deliverables; developing a menu of solutions for ambiguous requests; discussing involvement of business processes (e.g. change management, communication) and facilitating decisions necessary for the delivery of business initiatives; communicating tough issues to stakeholders while maintaining an independent perspective; and making formal presentations and providing reports to various senior level audiences.
• Contributes to business strategy, organizational alignment, and prioritization of business initiatives by working closely with senior leaders to facilitate the development, refinement, and articulation of the business strategy; defining, developing, and evaluating performance metrics, standards, and methods to establish business success; developing strategic roadmaps for solution development and deployment; collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders, often with competing/conflicting objectives to ensure cohesive and reachable metrics; refining strategic plans and performance metrics as appropriate; and managing assigned initiatives or portfolio to ensure delivery of measurable results and alignment with strategic objectives.
• Leads the work of project/program team members by requesting and coordinating internal and/or external resources based on the alignment of team member skills and project/program demands; and delivering and promoting strategic vision and objectives to team members.
• Develops requirements for mid-to-large-scale business, process, or system solutions within assigned or across business domain(s) by interfacing stakeholders and cross-functional teams as appropriate; leveraging multiple business requirements gathering methodologies to identify business, functional, and non-functional requirements; developing and documenting comprehensive business cases to assess the costs, benefits, and ROI of proposed solutions; and leading team members in the development process as appropriate.
• Develops and implements business initiatives, systems, and/or processes to a desired future state by maintaining a working understanding of how current processes impact business operations across multiple domains; mapping current state against future state processes; engaging stakeholders to identify the operational needs and impact of requirements on upstream and downstream solution components; providing options and recommendations to senior management and business stakeholders on how to integrate solutions and deliverables with current systems and business processes across regions and domains; identifying and validating value gaps and opportunities for process enhancements or efficiencies; and establishing appropriate governance and workgroup infrastructures to accomplish strategic outcomes.
• Manages moderately complex, cross-functional projects and/or programs by coordinating stakeholders; recommending or assigning team resources based on project needs and team member strengths; consulting in the development, analysis, and management of project/program plans; collaborating on the coordination of project/program scope, schedules, and resource forecasts; proactively monitoring and identifying project/program/business initiative risks, issues, and trigger events; developing mitigation plans and strategies; and resolving or escalating risks or issues as appropriate.
• Proactively monitors and identifies client, project, program, and/or business risks, issues, and trigger events by developing mitigation plans and strategies; and resolving or escalating risks or issues as appropriate.
• Participates in and may lead change management plans associated with business initiatives by engaging stakeholders to obtain support and buy in for changes; partnering with senior management, project/program champions, and business owners to communicate and align improvement initiatives with business objectives; identifying appropriate change management method and approach; and ensuring stakeholders embrace a change management mindset, understand intent and purpose, and foster a culture of change.
• Performs assessments of strategic performance metrics to support business initiatives by working with data analytic teams to translate business requirements into analytic specifications; identifying appropriate data analysis tools and approach to assess business performance; determining suitable data gathering and analysis methods (e.g., process observation, hard data, etc.); defining data requirements and obtaining customer agreements, including customer requirements as appropriate; conducting statistical analyses and/or testing to evaluate the effectiveness of business solutions; and identifying and alleviating risks through data-driven analysis.
• Serves as an advocate for continuous learning and professional development by keeping abreast of industry practices, standards, and benchmarks; attending and participating in roadshows, conferences, training seminars, and/or speaking events as appropriate; contributing to the ongoing enhancement and innovation of consulting practices, standards, and methods across KP; serving as an advocate to ensure continuous learning and improvement is championed as a people strategy; providing training and guidance to stakeholders as appropriate; and providing ongoing coaching to build a continuous improvement mindset and build capabilities that drive results.
• Supports vendor management as required by assisting with reviews of vendor performance levels; ensuring service level agreements are met; and partnering with Procurement and/or Legal to develop service level and/or scope of work agreements as appropriate.
• Monitors compliance of work activities by ensuring business plans and team members adhere to KP, departmental, and/or business line policies and procedures.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelors degree from an accredited college or university and Minimum four (4) years experience in consulting, project management, data analytics, operations or a directly related field OR Masters degree in Business Administration, Public Health, Health Services Administration, or related field and Minimum two (2) years experience in consulting, project management, data analytics, operations or a directly related field OR Minimum seven (7) years experience in consulting, project management, data analytics, operations or a directly related field.

Additional Requirements:

• Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs): Business Acumen; Negotiation; Applied Data Analysis; Financial Acumen; Conflict Resolution; Managing Diverse Relationships; Process Validation; Risk Assessment; Service Focus; Change Management; Business Process Improvement; Creativity; Business Relationship Management; Requirements Elicitation & Analysis