Description
Virtual Innovation Facilitator & Coach
SAIC's Innovation Dojo team is looking for people to join our awesome team. So, we're hiring a unique combination of highly collaborative innovation facilitators and coaches who are passionate about getting results and continuously learning from the experiments they run together. This position can be performed anywhere within the U.S.
While no single person will have everything, the combined team of experts needs to include all of the following skills. So, look at the topics in the buzzword bingo list below. Which of these do you have experience facilitating, coaching and teaching in a virtual (or hybrid) situation? Which ones are you not skilled in but highly motivated to learn next/now? (IT IS NOT EXPECTED THAT YOU HAVE ALL OF THESE SKILLS NOW)
_ Design Thinking & Experimentation
_ Jobs to Be Done
_ FORTH method
_ Appreciative inquiry
_ Lean Startup
_ Agile/DevOps Coaching (Product Owners, Scrum Master, Teams, Users & Servant Leaders)
_ Leadership, Executive & Investor Decisions
_ Scrum Ceremonies, User story & backlog development, Planning Games, Kanban and Lean methods
_ Large group events: Hackathons, Pitch panels, Open Space, mini-Conferences, Communities of Practice
_ Stakeholder alignment and/or complex group collaboration sessions
_ Innovation Games or Agile Games
_ Learning Games, Microlearning design and development
_ PeopleNotTech "Psychological Safety Plays"
_ User Experience (User interviews, empathy, personas, journey maps, story mapping)
_ Business model canvas / Lean canvas
_ Traditional techniques (fishbone, value stream, forcefield, retros etc.)
We know this is a unique combination of skills. So, instead of looking for a unicorn, we're bringing together people who have each mastered a subset of these skills to learn from each other as a collaborative team. So, when you reply to this posting, tell us your strengths as well as what you're most enthusiastic about learning/doing next. We work best with teammates who effectively assess their skills and seek feedback so we all learn from each other and accomplish great things together.
Who are we & what is SAIC's Innovation Dojo about? With a passion for fostering innovation using agile, design thinking and startup methods, we evolved SAIC's Innovation Dojo into a place of experimentation where virtual and hybrid teams achieve peak performance and collaboration.
Things you'll do if you join our team:
- You'll focus on listening to executives and engineering teams and care about what they need in order to expertly design virtual facilitated work sessions that help them get results. You'll accomplish this by re-using many of the industry standard facilitation and coaching methods listed above as well as new techniques we create as a team.
- When clients ask you for unexpected things or problems, you'll respond with a curious and positive "possibilities mindset".
- Then, you'll work together in different "pairs" to plan/practice your customized facilitation learning sessions carefully but when unexpected things happen, you'll need to figure out on the fly how to respond and change accordingly.
- You'll collaborate with a team of facilitators, coaches and learning designers who have different ideas, opinions and skill sets
- You'll try/learn new digital collaboration tools and sometimes use them live with teams before you have time to master them
- You'll invent new ways to leverage basic technology like Zoom, Confluence, BlueScape, InVision, Vyond, MSTeams, Slack, Adobe suite and other tech your client or corporate firewall doesn't block in order to get the job done.
- You'll set up virtual workspaces and teach people how to use the tools necessary to participate in sessions you designed
- You'll network with industry peers and potential customers
- You'll proactively investigate and learn new things that foster innovation, productivity, agility and collaboration. Then you'll turn around to illustrate or capture what you discovered so that everyone we work with benefits - because that's fun for you!
- You'll engage in team sales activities and demonstrate what we do to clients so they can see us/you in action
- You'll effectively (model) facilitate Scrum ceremonies and other roles so that others can observe how it's done
- You'll do other random duties assigned to make the team successful (not just because we have to say this but because things pop up constantly and we're a team of servant leaders willing do things ourselves to succeed)
Common requests we hear from the clients & people we serve:
- "Help us innovate & become a high performing, collaborative team"
- "Help us get REAL benefits of Agility or DevSecOps"
- "Help us bust obstacles & lead change" (Executives)
- "Help us fix _X_ and create new possibilities/solutions"
- "Help us launch a new _(product/team/initiative/startup/transformation)_"
- "Teach us_(Agile, DevSecOps, Collaboration, Design Thinking ... and more)_"
When you hear requests like these, do you ask questions and then use your virtual facilitation or coaching skills to help? Then you have nothing to lose by reaching out.
Attributes, Mindsets & Behavior Patterns that lead to success on this team:
- Listening well to clients/users, reflecting back on what you heard/learned and using a "possibilities mindset" to help them succeed
- High skill facilitating/teaching/coaching on many topics above and ability to help others benefit from them
- Carefully and creatively designing and facilitating sessions, games and coaching activities that help other people succeed
- Past experience with or knowledge of Agile, DevSecOps, engineering, software development or government contracts execution/delivery
- Flexibility to change as we discover our clients have a new pattern of needs (like a startup)
- Humility to question your own assumptions and collaborate with others even when you disagree
- Growth mindset of constant learning and continuous improvement
- Collaborating and teaching what you've learned
- Responding to change over following a plan
- Fearlessly running experiments, being surprised and objectively learning from them
- Sense of humor & ability to resolve conflict by having crucial conversations
- Requesting feedback and using it to improve yourself, others and results
Things that lead to failure in this role?
Bias against methods we facilitate, unproductive competition with your teammates, lack of motivation or self-organization, declining feedback, avoiding crucial conversations, huge ego, lack of interest in how software or engineering solutions are delivered, inability to engage a diverse group of people or generate psychological safety among the clients or teams we work with/for, becoming easily frustrated with roadblocks, surprises or situations when you're sure you're right and others are wrong.
Qualifications
Required Education and Experience:
- Bachelors and eighteen (18) years or more of related experience; OR Masters and sixteen (16) years or more experience; PhD and JD and eight (8) or more experience
- Five (5) or more years of experience with any of the following: Professional Facilitation, Agile Software Delivery, Agile Coach, Business/Startup Owner
- Six (6) months of fully virtual work experience
- Demonstrated ability to skillfully facilitate or coach on one or more listed topics
Desired Qualifications (beneficial, not required):
- Certifications in any of the key topics areas: Design Thinking, Agile, Lean, FORTH etc.
- Secret or Top Secret Clearance (past or present)
- Options to work as a contractor, part-time or full-time employee
Target salary range: $175,001 - $185,000. The estimate displayed represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors.
