Job Type: Full Time, permanent role. Senior Leader
Role Level: Senior Leadership (SLT Team)
Reports to: Managing Director, UK
Key Relationships: CMO, CTO, CFO, CCO, Director of People and their senior teams
Location: Office based, Hampshire UK
Rocksteady Music School is the UK’s largest rock and pop school. We teach fun and inclusive in-school band lessons to primary age children. Our mission is simple: to amplify children’s self-belief and remove barriers to music education. We’re currently in thousands of schools in the UK, teaching over 125K children every week, and recently launched in Australia – and we’re growing fast.
Our offices in Liphook and Birmingham are home to many of our central office teams. From there, we all play our part in supporting our band leaders to reach as many children as possible with their lessons. That’s what gets us out of bed in the morning!
We're now looking for a Strategic Delivery Director to join our team in our Liphook office.
The Strategic Delivery Director will make sure that Rocksteady’s most important strategic priorities become operational reality. Working as the Managing Director UK’s strategic delivery partner, they will provide the structure, pace and cross-functional leadership that turns strategy into execution across the business.
This is not a traditional project management role. It exists because Rocksteady now runs several major, interconnected strategic programmes at once, all cutting across marketing, technology, finance, operations and people. Coordinating them has increasingly fallen to the Executive Team alongside their core roles, which stretches capacity and makes single point accountability harder. This role gives those priorities a single, trusted owner who can work closely with senior leaders to translate strategy into delivery.
This is also a newly created role, Rocksteady has not had a dedicated strategic delivery function before. The right person will build the approach and take into consideration how Rocksteady already works rather than introducing heavy, prescriptive project management methodology.
As Strategic Delivery Director you will:
- translate strategy into clear, deliverable execution
- challenge delivery assumptions and test whether plans will actually work
- identify implementation risks early and shape practical ways through them
- ensure strategic decisions stay grounded in what the business can operationally deliver
As Strategic Delivery Director you will own:
Strategic delivery portfolio
Owning Rocksteady’s strategic delivery portfolio as a whole, not just individual projects, and making the trade-offs that keep it moving. They will:
- prioritise initiatives so effort goes where it matters most
- sequence delivery across programmes to avoid contention and delay
- identify dependencies between programmes and manage them actively
- identify capacity constraints during planning and factor them in before they stall delivery
- recommend clear trade-offs when priorities compete
- maintain momentum across multiple programmes at once
Executive enablement
Turning executive decisions into delivery so leaders can lead. The Strategic Delivery Director will:
- translate executive decisions into clear, owned delivery plans
- ensure agreed actions are followed through to completion
- maintain alignment across departments so priorities stay joined up
- highlight blockers early and drive them to resolution
- enable executives to focus on leadership rather than day-to-day coordination
Cross-functional leadership
Acting as the connective strand across senior teams, leading delivery across every function without owning any of them. This depends on trusted relationships and the credibility to keep delivery aligned to the commitments the leadership team have agreed. They will:
- build trusted relationships across every executive function
- influence senior leaders without relying on direct authority
- hold teams accountable for the delivery commitments they have agreed
- challenge constructively, and early, when priorities slip
- remove blockers and keep delivery moving
Better ways of delivering change
Embedding consistent ways of working across our strategic initiatives, to better our strategic efficiency including:
- planning, prioritisation and putting effective project management systems in place
- risk and dependency management
- clear, trusted delivery reporting
- capturing and applying lessons learned
As Strategic Delivery Director you’ll need:
- a track record of leading complex, cross-functional strategic programmes to real outcomes
- genuine portfolio management capability across competing priorities
- experience delivering transformation and organisational change
- the credibility and confidence to influence executives without direct authority
- systems thinking, and the ability to see how everything connects
- strong organisational awareness and emotional intelligence
- sound commercial understanding of how delivery affects the business
- exceptional communication, written and in the room
- real comfort operating in ambiguity, and turning it into clear plans and owners
Desirable
- experience in a scaling or transforming organisations
- an understanding of, or genuine interest in, education, music or purpose-led businesses.
Experience with formal delivery methodologies are useful, but secondary. We care far more about judgement, influence and results.
What if I don’t tick every box?
At Rocksteady, we’re not looking for people who simply tick every box. We understand that the right role should challenge you, help you grow, and give you opportunities to develop new skills.
If you bring transferable skills, relevant experience, a fresh perspective, and a passion for making a difference, we’d love to hear from you.
Benefits
- 35 hour working week
- 28 days holiday plus bank holidays
- Long service awards including an additional 4 weeks’ pay after 5 years
- Free onsite parking
- Personal development opportunities
- Comprehensive benefits package including discounts on everyday purchases, free 24/7 GP service.
- Enhanced maternity and paternity pay.
- Celebratory staff away-days, Christmas parties and social events.
- Opportunities to work with the Rocksteady Foundation, reaching children and young people in charities and support groups across the UK.
This is a chance to shape how a growing, purpose-led organisation delivers its strategy, working directly alongside the Managing Director on the priorities that matter most. Rocksteady brings music to around 125,000 children every week across more than 4,600 primary schools, and the work this role holds together is what turns our ambition for those children into reality.
Every once in a while, you get the chance to be part of something really special. When you join Rocksteady, you know immediately that you’ve found it. We might be growing fast but we pay special attention to protecting our unique working culture and ensuring everyone feels comfortable to be themselves at work. We look out for each other, welcome new colleagues as friends and stay true to our small-company roots; rolling up our sleeves if a job needs doing, solving problems together and, most importantly, always putting the children first. Likeminded people are joining us and we’re reaching more and more children with our lessons every week. We keep growing because we’re driven by our passion for the life-changing nature of music.
Join us and use your skills for good.
Your Passion. Their Future.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children and expect all our staff to share this commitment.
As this role involves regular work with children and young people, and meets the definition of regulated activity, it is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 you must disclose all unprotected unspent and spent cautions and convictions. Further details on what convictions must be declared can be found in the Governments Guidance on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and the Exceptions Order 1975.You can find out more about our policy on recruitment of ex-offenders here.
If you are offered this position, Rocksteady will ask you to complete an enhanced DBS check with a children's barred list check.
It is an offence for an individual who has been barred from working with children to apply for regulated activity. Providing false information is also an offence and could result in the rejection of the applicant, summarily dismissal if selected, and possible referral to the police.
Rocksteady Music School is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to the fair treatment of staff, potential staff, and of our services, regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, responsibilities for dependents, age, physical/mental disability, or offending background.
To find out more about Rocksteady, check out our website www.rocksteadymusicschool.com
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