Title of Position:    Organizational Effectiveness Advisor

Location:                Work will be done both in Jordan and virtually from the consultant’s point of origin.

Expected Start date and Duration:  Consultant needed ASAP, with urgency.  LOE is approx. 80 days per year over the next 3 - 4 years.

Project Background

The Jordan Technical Assistance Program (JTAP) is a five-year USAID-funded project to support the organizational culture and capacity within the Government of Jordan (GoJ) to successfully implement education and youth reforms. JTAP is a nationwide activity, supporting a broad range of education and youth stakeholders and GoJ counterparts at central-level Ministries, governorate, and directorate-level entities, as well as other relevant actors. The two principal counterpart institutions are the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Ministry of Youth (MoY).

The goal of JTAP is to work with stakeholders to transform the organizational culture, technical, and institutional capacity within the targeted GoJ entities who as a result successfully implement education and youth reforms. The reforms targeted by this project that will guide its implementation are the priority areas outlined in USAID’s planned partner government systems (PGS) agreements with GoJ entities, and the GoJ’s education and youth strategic plans. The organizational culture, behavior change, and change management approaches will be deliberate, complementary to, and symbiotic with technical and institutional capacity building interventions.

Position Summary: 

JTAP seeks to strengthen the capacity of the Jordanian Ministries of Education and Youth in a range of areas including learning recovery post COVID, teacher professionalism, youth programming, financial management, human resources, monitoring & evaluation, and public communication. There are approximately 20 project staff.

The Organizational Effectiveness (OE) Advisor will provide strategic in-person and remote technical assistance, guidance, and coaching for the project’s organizational effectiveness and change management efforts. It is anticipated that this advisory support will be actualized through short term technical assistance trips to Jordan to intensively work with the project team over a period of three weeks per visit. In addition, upon return to their point of origin, the OE advisor will continue to provide remote support to the project through regular meetings and consultations with project teams and individual team members and participate in key meetings with stakeholders and counterparts. The Advisor will engage in other opportunities as agreed upon with the Chief of Party and project staff.

The first aspect of the OE Advisor’s responsibilities is internal to the project itself. This involves providing consultation to the Chief of Party and project staff to support them in their internalizing and modeling of the same practices that the project supports with the GoJ Ministries, especially continuous organizational learning and adaptation. This includes exemplary, distributive, and inclusive leadership and management, transparent communication and collaboration, a results orientation, openness to innovation, and a systems approach to change.  This also includes knowing how and when to accompany the process of the project in a way that is aware and respectful of the qualities of the Jordanian government, society, and culture. 

The second aspect of this person’s responsibilities is with the Government of Jordan. Activities will take place at the individual, team, directorate, ministerial, and systems levels. The incumbent will be responsible for providing overall strategic and technical thought partnership to the ministries in a way that respects and builds on existing aspirations, goals, and skills in implementing fit for purpose activities. The Advisor will be responsible for developing inputs for the annual work plan, staffing activities with qualified people, providing guidance and oversight to project staff and consultants that work on specific assignments, and monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the organizational change component. In general, the position will be responsible for ensuring that TRG’s substantial experience in listening to, respecting, and working with stakeholders in defining the why, what, and how of organizational/ institutional change, capacity building, and systems strengthening while designing and implementing activities is applied.

This is a part-time position that will be conducted both in Jordan and virtually from the consultant’s point of origin.

Primary Role and Responsibilities 

  1. Provide coaching, mentoring, and technical guidance to the Chief of Party around integrating organizational effectiveness approaches, tools, and practices across the project’s IRs.
  2. Provide coaching, mentoring, and technical guidance to IR teams to effectively integrate organizational effectiveness approaches, tools, and practices within their workstreams.
  3. Ensure that organizational culture change and systemic change approaches are relevant to the Jordanian context and contribute to the success of the project and GoJ and ministries’ goals and aspirations.
  4. Provide in-person and virtual training, capacity development, and structured spaces for staff in sharing practices and learnings in organizational effectiveness and change management within and across the GOJ entities
  5. Support the design and implementation of organizational capacity assessments to determine strengths and obstacles in domains including roles/responsibilities, strategy/implementation, structure/staffing, leadership/management, internal and external communication/coordination.
  6. Support the design and implementation of individual, team, operating units, and partnership capacity assessments to determine strengths and gaps in knowledge, skills, behaviors, and practices, policies, relationships, structures, and mental models that must be addressed to support successful implementation.
  7. Advise on the development and implementation of plans for building on the strengths, assets, and what works while addressing the barriers in organizational and individual effectiveness.
  8. Design and facilitate leadership development programs, retreats, team-building programs, strategic planning and systems strengthening initiatives, when appropriate.

Experience and Education Requirements:

Experience  

  • Ten years of full-time work experience as a trainer and organizational development practitioner.
  • Five years’ experience in training and organizational capacity building in developing countries, preferably USAID-funded and in Jordan and the Middle East region. 
  • Experience in organizational development, change management, leadership and management development, organizational culture and behavior change, strategic planning, team building, coaching, training design and delivery, and stakeholder engagement. 
  • Experience in supporting, supervising and mentoring a cohesive, integrated team that elevates to another level of effective support to country stakeholders.
  • Proven ability to work effectively in a team-oriented environment. 
  • Project management experience including development of work plans and monitoring and evaluation,
  • Project experience within a shifting paradigm of development effectiveness and building internal and external relationships that are based on and achieve equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Education 

Master’s degree or bachelor’s degree with equivalent education/work experience in a related field (i.e., organizational development, adult education, international development, international or multi-cultural communication, international business, or management) 

 

Key Skills 

  • Demonstrated skills providing organizational effectiveness and change management services for government institutions.
  • Ability to craft a customized, collaborative, inclusive approach that is entirely focused on the client’s needs, priorities, visions, and aspirations – as they evolve and emerge. 
  • Genuine and demonstrated curiosity and exploration towards effective approaches to individual, team and organizational development and learning and how they can contribute to our clients’ success. 
  • Ability to quickly learn the technical language of the education and youth sectors, key issues, and culture of our client organizations. 
  • Written and verbal fluency in English and Arabic.

TRG is an equal employment opportunity employer. We adhere to a policy of making employment decisions without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, age, or disability. We assure you that your opportunity for employment with TRG depends solely on your qualifications. 

Application Instructions:  To apply, please submit a Resume/CV that clearly shows you meet the Qualifications Requirements of the position to linda.aines@internationalink.net, and add “Organizational Effectiveness Advisor” in the subject line.

Deadline for Applications: December 7, 2021

 

 

 

 

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