Strategic Enablement Lead

Essential Skills / Basic Qualifications:

• Strategic narrative & translation – Ability to translate enterprise strategy into clear, compelling narratives, artefacts, and messages that align senior leaders, platforms, and delivery teams.
• Executive-level artefact development – Experience creating concise, high‑quality materials (options papers, strategy packs, decision briefs, narratives) for ExCo, CIO/CTO and senior forums, enabling fast, well‑governed decision‑making
• Senior stakeholder influence – Proven experience operating with CIO/CTO-level stakeholders, influencing without formal authority, and driving alignment across complex, federated organisations

Desirable Skills / Preferred Qualifications:

• Change, communications, or portfolio enablement background – Prior roles in strategy, portfolio, change, communications, or transformation enablement function
• Technology & transformation context – Experience working within large-scale technology or platform transformations, with sufficient technical literacy to engage credibly with engineering and architecture leaders.  
• Financial services environment – Familiarity with regulated, enterprise-scale organisations and the governance, risk, and stakeholder complexity that comes with them.

Purpose of the role

To support the implementation of major changes and improvements to the organisations IT service management practices by driving strategic initiatives to modernize, transform and future-proof how the bank delivers and supports technology services. 

Accountabilities

• Establishment of KPIs to measure the success and impact of specific transformation programmes, and actively monitor KPIs to identify the ongoing effectiveness of the initiative, improvement areas with the IT service management framework, and mitigate any potential issues.
• Analysis of emerging IT service management tools and platforms to discover if they can support the banks transformation goals and future needs.
• Manage the selection and seamless implementation of new tools and platforms into the IT service management processes, while overseeing the migration of data from legacy systems, to improve system efficiency and reduce manual workload.
• Development and communication of change management strategic initiatives, visions and goals through workshops, sessions, and various communication channels to highlight the benefits and impact of modernising, transforming, and future-proofing the way the bank delivers and supports its technology services.
• Prioritisation of the bank’s initiatives based on their impact on the bank’s goals, resource availability and feasibility, and develop and monitoring a clear execution plan for each transformation project to ensure a successful implementation.

Director Expectations

• 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 affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions made outside of own function, offering significant input to function wide strategic initiatives.
• Manage, coordinate and enable resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub-function.
• Escalates breaches of policies / procedure appropriately.
• Foster and guide compliance, ensure regulations are observed that relevant processes in place to facilitate adherence.
• Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to both monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays, when appropriate.
• Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division / Group to achieve the overall business objectives.
• Maintain broad and comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline alongside up-to-date relevant sector / functional knowledge, and insight into external market developments / initiatives.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/ sensitive situations.
• Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic decisions or recommendations within own area.
• Negotiate with and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally.
• Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions/ businesses divisions.
• Mandated as a spokesperson for the function and business division.

All Senior Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.