Term: Fixed Term - 6-12 months (with the possibility of extension)

Type: Full-Time

When: No deadline. Applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis and therefore individuals are encouraged to apply early.

Reports to: CPI Europe Director, but within a flat structured, self-managed organisation

About the Centre for Public Impact (CPI)

CPI is a not-for-profit founded by the Boston Consulting Group. ​​We work with governments, public servants, and other changemakers to reimagine government, and turn ideas into action, so that government works for everyone.

We are a small organisation, and just over six years old, but already our global footprint is expansive and we partner with some of the biggest names in government, academia, and public sector innovation in the world. As well as the Europe team, we have a team in Australia/ New Zealand and North America, and a very new team (of one) in India. We are all supported by the Global Hub team who provides operational and communication support across the regions.

Our values: 

• courageous - we have the courage to speak the truth, to challenge without fear, and tackle the difficult questions

• respectful - we respect differences, we seek to understand them and we look out for one another

• optimistic - we are positive about what we and governments can do for our societies

• inclusive - we are non partisan, we work together and seek ideas and solutions across the divides

To advance our purpose of reimagining government so that it works for everyone, CPI seeks to attract and support a diversity of backgrounds, experience, talent, and thought. For this reason, we encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply. This includes candidates that have previously found it hard to be considered for other positions on the basis of their qualifications, disabilities, personal background or life events. If you would like to apply for the position but see a barrier to joining us, please do apply and we will work with you to find a solution. You can also read our full Diversity Equity and Inclusion Policy here.

About CPI Europe

CPI Europe was established in January 2020. We are a team of six (and growing!) and over the last 2 years have been working hard to build a presence, develop strong relationships, and secure a pipeline of work across the UK and Europe. In line with CPI’s mission and vision for government, CPI Europe has been exploring what that means in different European public institutions. Our initial discovery phase has led us to support changemakers to bring about a transformation in public management practice and we believe this transformation in public management practice is necessary for our vision for government to be realised. Currently, CPI Europe’s programme portfolio is built around three core objectives:

• CPIE is helping public institutions reimagine and strengthen relationships between government, communities, and the planet.

• CPIE is helping to ensure that public services are redesigned so that relationships are prioritised and people's needs are put first

• CPIE is working with organisations to ensure they have the tools and frameworks needed to optimise for learning and build learning environments.

On the basis of this success and anticipated further investment in 2022, CPIE is looking for Programme Managers who are as excited about reimagining government as we are! 

Most of the team is based in London, but we are looking for candidates to join us from anywhere across the UK/Europe. As we are still in start-up mode, we need someone who is willing to work across the full spectrum of tasks - from administrative work to blue-sky thinking. Most importantly we are refining our approach as Learning Partners and seek individuals who have experience working with partners to build their learning, adaptation, and experimentation muscles so that we can ensure the long-term success and sustainability of our work. 

How we work

CPI Europe is also a self-managed team. While self-management is a continuous process of development and improvement, we think it means (amongst other things) adopting a “tight on values, loose on delivery” approach to our work; working as a team to collectively set our vision and priorities; and thinking hard about who makes which decisions, and why - we don’t default to “decision-making from the top”.

You can read more about what it feels like to work in a self-managed environment in this blog by Carmella, who is part of our Global Hub team. 

What you’ll be doing

As a Programme Manager  in the CPIE team, you’ll be working closely with the rest of the team, spreading your time across client delivery, programs, research and thought leadership. Our work  is a blend of thinking and doing - we spend part of our time developing and sharing new ideas, and part of our time working with partner organisations to apply these ideas in practice. If you want to get a better sense of what we do, you can visit our CPI Europe landing page.

Programme Managers across all CPI Regional teams are expected to:

• Independently hold and manage strong and trusting client relationships

• Lead discrete projects and/or owns workstreams of larger projects and develop high quality deliverables

• Drive analytical and intellectual depth in work products and proactively share our work with broader CPI teams

• Identify and proactively propose ideas around how we can work together more effectively as a team

More specifically for this role, we’re also looking for someone who will take responsibility for leading engagement with our partners and clients who are seeking Learning Partners to help transform their services / organisations. This will require superior programme management capabilities, skills in navigating complex programmes and building engagements that meet client needs as well as feeding back learning into the organisation that helps us to further develop our offer and thinking around different learning partner approaches.

We expect applicants for this role will have 7-10 years work experience.

The person we’re looking for will

• Be passionate about CPI’s vision for reimagining government

• Be comfortable leading research projects, and running programs, as well as projects which incorporate both research and programmatic elements (which most do!)

• Have outstanding written and communication skills

• Have a strong understanding of how government works

• Have excellent organisational skills and experience with balancing competing priorities

• Have excellent interpersonal skills, including feeling confident building new relationships, and negotiating challenging conversations with stakeholders and partners, if necessary

• Be highly self motivated and capable of taking initiative and working autonomously

• Demonstrate an empathic and humble leadership approach

• Think beyond the task at hand, and draw connections between their work and other pieces of work and priorities across global CPI teams

• Be a strategic thinker, who will actively contribute to shaping the development and vision of the Europe team, and CPI more broadly

• Be comfortable with ambiguity and the complexity of our work, where anything is possible but not always known in advance

• Feel excited about joining an international organisation and be willing to make the effort needed to build relationships and stay connected with colleagues in different timezones

• Be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment, and in ways which look quite different to a 9am-5pm style of job

• Be curious and eager to learn

• Feel excited about the idea of working in startup environment and with a very small team

• Be committed to exploring and experimenting with self management, even if this sometimes feels a bit confusing!

We are interested in candidates who have skills or expertise which are particularly relevant to our vision. This includes experience and familiarity with complexity and systems theory; co-design skills; experience working with relational methods; learning design expertise; experience working in government; and experience with complexity-informed evaluation approaches. However, while these skills will be considered a valuable asset, they are not essential and we certainly welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds with unconventional skills or experience that may still be relevant and valuable to our work.

We are using Applied in order to debias our hiring process and ensure that we are shortlisting candidates based on their skills. Your application will be anonymised for review. Although we ask for your CV, it will not be looked at until further down the process.

If you have any questions about this position or for information, Amy Noonan, Global People and Operations Manager, is happy to help.