Job Description – Portfolio Director

What you’ll do:

At a national level, Health Innovation South West works with 14 other geographically defined Health Innovation Network organisations to support innovators across England, to build a national pipeline of innovations that respond to needs of Integrated Care Systems, and to spread proven innovations at scale and pace.

Portfolio Directors are responsible for leading the design and development, and driving implementation and delivery of our portfolio of innovation projects and programmes across our local health and care systems to leverage maximum impact for patients and the public, respond to workforce challenges, and to stimulate economic growth across the South West Peninsula.

Health Innovation South West is a founding member of the Peninsula Health and Innovation Partnership, a collaboration of eight institutions working together to tackle priority health and care challenges in our region. Deeply committed to the place in which we live and work, we respond to the unique needs of communities living in a rural and coastal geography.

The Partnership has agreed five health-related missions as the initial focus for our collective impact. Mission-focused portfolios of projects and programmes are the means by which we deploy our collective assets, knowledge and capabilities to accelerate improvement in health outcomes for the Peninsula region.

The role of a Portfolio Director has four key dimensions.

Firstly, Leading and designing a mission or other portfolio of work purposefully selected to deliver impact, patient benefit and economic growth and ensure financial sustainability of the organisation.

Secondly, Portfolio Directors  have deep knowledge of the innovation pathway, and deploy their specialist expertise designing work from early stage innovation impact testing and innovator support, to scaling proven innovation across the geographical footprint, using QI and A&S methodologies..

Thirdly, the Portfolio Director will, as a member of the Senior Leadership Team, have collective responsibility for successful delivery of the organisation’s business plan. Achieving business objectives will be achieved through matrix management across the organisation and effective line management of direct reports.

Fourthly, Portfolio Directors will advance and secure commercial opportunities and foster meaningful partnerships locally, regionally, and nationally to ensure maximum impact.

Success is dependent on building deep and trusted relationships externally with potential funders, sponsors, and with our partners across the health and care system, supporting them to adapt and develop care pathways and workforce models to benefit from innovative technology and ways of working, and internally across our talented high-performing organisation.

Responsibilities:

·        Innovation and/or Implementation leadership - lead a portfolio of projects that respond to a defined area of the innovation pipeline, using specialist knowledge and methodological expertise to design, develop and deliver high quality projects and programmes that deliver planned benefits and impact, on time and within budget.

·        Portfolio leadership - lead a portfolio of work that spans different stages of the innovation pipeline, from discover through to deploy, and contribute to the achievement of organisational outcomes.

·        Strategic development - develop and drive forward strategies and associated action plans that underpin achievement of business objectives in the short, medium and longer term, enabled by effective account management and business development, to deliver mission aims and objectives. 

·        Governance and oversight – ensure that projects adhere to organisational governance and processes, contributing to senior oversight of performance.  

·        Senior Leadership – as a dynamic member of the Senior Leadership Team, be responsible for executing the annual business plan, managing risks and building a positive and inclusive culture to secure the continued success of Health Innovation South West.

·        Account management – develop, manage and influence long-term relationships with partners, funders and commissioners to support portfolio delivery, including local NHS organisations, local authorities and health and care providers, NHS England, Office for Life Sciences, and other regional and national bodies.

·        Partnership and Business Development – secure the necessary financial and stakeholder support to grow our innovation portfolios.

·        People management – line manage, develop and matrix manage a talented and diverse team of staff to ensure effective delivery of programme and portfolio aims.

·        Network engagement – lead our involvement in the Health Innovation Network, engaging with national programme governance structures ensuring our work is aligned to national priorities, and help to identify, shape and develop new national programmes aligned to the needs of the South West.

·        External engagement – represent the organisation externally, acting as an ambassador for the organisation at a local, regional and national level.

·        Demonstrate the values of the organisation in all your work as impact led, improvement focused and collaborative. 

Key success factors:

·        Leading portfolio design and delivery – proven ability to lead a portfolio of multi-year, multi-organisational, complex projects and programmes with a focus on impact.

·        Leading people – effective people manager, with a proven ability to motivate and develop others.

·        Influencing – collaborative and entrepreneurial, experienced in building compelling narrative to influence and persuade stakeholders at all levels; knowledge of effective account management approaches and refined communication skills.

·        Adaptable – comfortable with ambiguity, with the ability to look around problems, adapt approaches and make hard choices to achieve goals.

·        Forward looking – maintaining awareness of relevant policy environment, current evidence base and cutting edge thinking in order to anticipate change and develop portfolios accordingly.

·        Learning mind-set – a track record working on complex issues, embedding learning into practice and generating insight to inform approaches.

·        Passion – bring a commitment to improving health equity.

What you’ll need to succeed:

Experience we are looking for:

·        Working in a senior leadership role in innovation and improvement and/or transformational change in the health and care sector, academia and industry.

·        Leading large scale, cross-system portfolios of projects and programmes in a complex environment to achieve quantifiable impact

·        Application of change methodologies, such as QI, Model for Improvement, Six Sigma, or others, to deliver transformational change.

·        Managing and influencing senior stakeholder relationships to drive change and deliver improvement.

·        Commercial knowledge and a track record of successfully winning funding and investment to support portfolio ambitions.

·        A track record of leading, inspiring and managing high performing multifaceted teams in a dynamic environment.

·        Demonstrable management skills in  planning and reporting, and operational financial planning and reporting across a diverse portfolio of projects.

·        A project management qualification from professional bodies such as the APM and PMI, or comparable industry accreditation is desirable.

Experience and capabilities you will develop in the role:

·        Designing and delivering a portfolio of projects and programmes focused on developing, testing and evaluating innovation in a real world setting.

·        Applying cutting-edge methodological approaches to facilitate the spread of innovative practice.

·        Working as part of a national network to transform lives through healthcare innovation.

·        Building multi-partner collaborations that deliver impact across a large geography.

Abilities and attributes

·        Focus on impact – the ability to adapt and evolve approaches to achieve outcomes.

·        Determined and resilient – sets high standards and achieves them.

·        Passionate – about innovation in health and care and engaged by our long-term ambition to improve health equity.

·        Builds trust – works collaboratively to build relationships with internal and external stakeholders.

·        Strategic thinker – ability to effectively manage a complex range of competing priorities and make hard choices to achieve goals.

·        Strong communicator – ability to communicate convincingly to a wide range of audiences.

Responsible to: Executive Directors

Our Values

•       We are impact-led - we are solutions focused, action orientated and adapt plans to achieve desired end goals.

•       We are improvement focused - we seek to understand problems, look at things from different angles, test ideas and learn from our experiences.

•       We are collaborative - we value diversity of perspectives, commit to and place trust in others to contribute towards collective goals.