This is a 6-8 month Limited Time Duration position.  Position can sit in Portland or Spartanburg office locations.

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization:

This is a key in-house strategy and project management position for an organized, passionate and goal-oriented future leader who understands what projects have in common, and their strategic role in how organizations succeed, learn and change.

Manage and deliver strategic projects on a local level across brands and respective functions within the boundaries of time, cost & quality while focusing on the customers’ expectations and requirements. 

• Drive major change initiatives across functions
• Manage (senior) stakeholder’s relationship and secure buy-ins to project deliverables
• Coach and groom future junior talents 
• Deliver projects with robust project management discipline 
• Uphold and enhance the brand of Strategy & Programs with (senior) stakeholders

Key Responsibilities: 

Project Management

• Lead and manage to successfully deliver the assigned global and x-functional projects, endto-end, ideally through applying PMI methodology effectively and ensure high quality and consistency of deliverables
• Define, align & communicate project scope and drive creation of detailed project plans
• Take strong ownership to lead and facilitate the execution and completion of the defined project plan through effectively coordinating people and resources.
• Drive and measure engagement reviews and quality assurance procedures to ensure KPIs are met. 
• Monitor the project variables (cost, effort, scope, etc.) against the project plan in order to implement corrective or preventative actions.
• Manage the change management approach for respective project and ensure changes are smoothly and successfully implemented to achieve lasting benefits.
• Finalize all activities across the projects/programs to formally close and hand over the project, ensuring project documents are approved, completed, maintained, and stored appropriately. 
• Ensure tracking of project benefits and KPIs through the project lifecycle

Dependency Management

• Think globally and x-functionally in order to identify project dependencies and their impact, raise dependency issues with the project sponsor and co-create solutions 
• Identifying and communicating risks early to enable mitigation efforts and maintain program goals, timelines, and costs. 

Resource planning

• Estimate, align, and proactively track multi-functional project team resources (internals and externals) to deliver and support projects and programs 
• Manage, coach, develop and train the formed project team members, input to performance reviews, provide feedback and allocate work considering complexity and experience level

Financials and Controlling

• Establish project controlling as an independent element within the project to verify and control the allocated project costs on time in budget. 
• Ensure compliance to SCM standards, e.g. PMO, SCM controlling standards.
• Manage project business case and budget through tracking and reporting the monthly budget accruals and variances and ensure timely and accurate invoicing.

Communication

• As conflicts and escalations arise within projects, identify solutions and propose these to project business owner or through Program Governance structure. Support their resolution in a timely and appropriate manner. 
• Use appropriate and effective communication methods to Senior Management and project stakeholder throughout the project life cycle, in order to successfully deliver and embed the project within the organization.

If required: People Management  

• Ensure appropriate leadership skills are present at every level through creating a motivational and supportive work environment in which employees are coached, trained and provided with career opportunities through development 

• Allocate the different work to the respective employees considering experience, complexity, workload and organizational efficiency
• Continuously monitor and evaluate team workload and organizational efficiency with the support of IT systems, data and analysis and team feedback and make appropriate changes in order to meet business needs.
• Provide team members/direct reports with clear direction and targets that are aligned with business needs and GIT objectives
• Coach and Manage activities of (assistant) project managers and business analysts

Key Relationships:  

• Drive project activities and connect with other stakeholders to share activities across work streams
• Initiate and drive discussions with x-functional stakeholders to collect and consolidate feedback, prepare and align solutions 
• Proactively manage stakeholders, build relationships and manage communication

Stakeholders can relate to the following core functions: 

o Sales functions (Wholesale, eCom, Retail, Team Services) 

o Marketing (horizontal and vertical BU divisions) 

o Global Operations (Global IT, SCM, etc.) 

o Corporate functions (e.g. legal, finance & performance management)

 o North America Supply Chain leadership and functional teams 

o External partners

Skills:

Soft skills:

• End-to-end mindset, big picture view of problems on hand
• Engaging, open and react to feedbacks and improve
• Highly self-motivated individuals o Independently manage portfolio of tasks and handle upward communication proactively
• Change management skills of influencing network of stakeholders
• Coaching experience 
• Strong communication (both written and verbal) and facilitation skills (small and large groups) especially when interacting with different levels of business
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment with different international cultures
• Pro-active (engaging & impact-oriented) mindset, ability to think end-to-end

Hard skills:

• Proven track records on wide areas of tools (e.g. Project planning, process mapping, enterprise solutions, Excel analytics, etc.)
• Solid presentation and storytelling skills 
• Discipline in planning time management and organization skills 
• Project management, lean six-sigma certification 
• English skills (verbal and written) 
• Strong MS-Office skills (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Smartsheet) 
• Strong experience to manage complex projects 
• Strong experience to work on several projects simultaneously
• Business mindset: strong numerical and analytical skills

People management skills:

• Ability to guide and manage a (project)team
• Coach junior team members through providing feedbacks to support the development and performance of the team
• Drive and manage onboarding
• Support recruiting
• Foster a team culture that encourages trust, open and constructive discussion of important issues

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications: 

• Four-year college or university degree with focus on with emphasis on the areas of business, economics, logistics, planning, supply chain, information systems, or operations; MBA a plus.  Other experience or a combination of education and experience may be substituted for a degree.
• Minimum 6-8 years of relevant work experience in mid to large-scale project or program management (e.g. top tier consulting, project management, apparel/fashion, or supply chain management, background)
• Strong experience in Change Management and Lean Six Sigma methodology
• PMP and lean sigma certification preferred
• Ability to travel, domestic or international, as required

adidas celebrates diversity, supports inclusiveness and encourages individual expression in our workplace. We do not tolerate the harassment or discrimination toward any of our applicants or employees. 

At adidas we offer a Hybrid work policy which requires attendance in the office Monday through Thursday, with the flexibility to work remotely on Friday each week. For work requiring a high degree of collaboration or an in-person presentation, in-office attendance is required even on Friday. The working location of this position is Indianapolis.

Though our teammates hail from all corners of the world, our working language is English.