🎯 The $60K Question: Why Your Next Promotion Depends on Strategic Positioning

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Featured Job Listings

🏆 Top Picks of the Week (Hand-Picked, High-Impact Roles)

🔹 Vice President, Professional Services
Company: Harris Computer
Location: Remote (travel 25%+)
Apply: Apply here

The Vice President of Professional Services leads Harris’ global services organization and has P&L responsibility for complex software‑implementation projects across multiple business units. This executive will reshape delivery models, optimize financial performance, and develop high-performing teams while collaborating closely with engineering, product, and client-success leaders. Harris is aggressively expanding—its 2024 year‑in‑review highlighted 25 acquisitions across 15 verticals and hundreds of new employees and customers, and in April 2025, the company acquired Vantrix Corporation, bringing multimedia content‑adaptation software to Harris’ telecom clients. Candidates comfortable driving operational transformation amid rapid growth will thrive in this role.

Recruiter Contact: Gianna Rodriguez

🔹 Chief of Staff
Company: Placemakr
Location: Washington, DC (hybrid/remote‑first)
Apply: Apply here

Placemakr’s Chief of Staff partners directly with the President and senior leadership to orchestrate cross‑functional initiatives across marketing, technology, finance, & operations. Acting as a “force multiplier,” you’ll ensure strategic projects stay aligned and on schedule, provide operational support to the COO and CFO and eventually own high‑value partnerships as the company. The role demands a proactive problem‑solver (MBA or equivalent experience) who thrives on ambiguity and can influence without formal authority. Placemakr is on an upswing—after raising $65 million (over $350 million total funding) in 2023, the company achieved its first full month of profitability in June 2024, expanded into Austin, Atlanta, Washington DC and San Antonio and launched new Texas properties including the 259‑unit Placemakr Downtown Austin and the “Hosted by Placemakr” brank. This momentum provides broad exposure and career growth for a driven operator.

Recruiter Contact: Kelly Evers

🔹 Vice President, Event Delivery
Company: FIRST (First Agency)
Location: New York, NY (hybrid)
Apply: Apply here

As a senior leader at FIRST, the Vice President, Event Delivery oversees global event-delivery teams, defining service excellence and operational strategies while managing capacity, budgets and client experience. The role requires mentoring managers, aligning venue sourcing and event technology with client delivery, and serving as the escalation point for complex challenges. You’ll champion continuous improvement and commercial acumen, ensuring innovation, sustainability and digital tools elevate every event. FIRST is a decorated brand‑experience agency—recent recognitions include Chief Marketer’s 2025 Most Innovative Marketing Agencies list, Event Marketer’s 2024 Top Agency of the Year, and repeated placement on Chief Marketer’s “200 Top Marketing Agencies” lists. Joining a multi‑award‑winning agency offers unparalleled exposure to high‑profile clients and cutting‑edge experiential marketing.

Recruiter Contact: Kerry M.

🔹 Vice President of Scrum Masters
Company: Ascensus
Location: Philadelphia, PA (hybrid)
Apply: Apply here

The VP of Scrum Masters leads Ascensus’ agile practice across all software development groups, reporting directly to the CTO and overseeing more than 20 Scrum Masters This position builds a center of excellence, defines and socializes agile metrics (velocity, cycle time, team health and business value) and drives AI‑enabled project‑management tools to improve predictability and delivery. Candidates need 10+ years of agile experience, a data‑driven mindset, and the ability to lead large‑scale transformations while championing servant leadership and psychological safety. Ascensus is expanding its market footprint—in April 2024 it announced plans to acquire Vanguard’s Individual 401(k), SEP and SIMPLE IRA recordkeeping business, adding nearly 280 000 retirement plans, and in March 2024 it completed the purchase of Mutual of Omaha’s 401(k) recordkeeping division covering 2 300 plans and $3.9 billion in assets.

Recruiter Contact: Stacy Strawbridge

Company: EnterpriseDB (EDB)
Location: Remote – U.S.
Apply: Apply here

EDB’s Chief of Staff partners with the CEO and executive team to drive strategic planning, cross‑functional projects and change management initiatives across the company. The role requires exceptional analytical and communication skills, business acumen and the ability to shepherd mergers, acquisitions or reorganizations while maintaining confidentiality You’ll help set priorities, track progress, and ensure decisions are data‑driven and aligned with strategic goals, while promoting visibility of the executive leadership team within the industry. EDB is innovating rapidly: in May 2024 it launched EDB Postgres AI, a Postgres‑based platform that unifies transactional, analytical and AI workloads across any cloud; in August 2025 independent research showed this platform can cut data‑center emissions by up to 87%, and a collaboration with NVIDIA integrates advanced AI software for faster, more secure generative‑AI solutions. Joining EDB offers a front‑row seat to cutting‑edge AI initiatives and sustainability innovations in the database world.

Recruiter Contact: Paul Drennan

🔹 Assistant Vice President – Change Management, People Advisory Services
Company: Genpact
Location: U.S. (remote/hybrid)
Apply: Apply here

This senior change‑management leader will steer Genpact’s People Advisory Services practice, crafting enterprise‑wide change strategies for digital transformation, managed services and operating‑model shifts. You’ll advise clients on adoption approaches, lead multiple engagements, develop frameworks to measure impact and oversee teams of change‑management professionals while supporting business development and mentoring colleagues. The role demands deep expertise in change methodologies, experience with technology‑enabled transformations and strong client‑relationship skills. Genpact is pivoting to an AI‑first future—in June 2025 it acquired XponentL Data, adding domain‑led data strategy and engineering capabilities that will accelerate its AI Gigafactory and agentic‑AI solutions. media. The company is also expanding globally: a new delivery center opened in Iași, Romania in May 2025 grew to over 650 employees within 18 months, with investments in training teams on generative and agentic AI to support global clients. Joining Genpact offers the chance to drive transformative change while leveraging cutting‑edge AI and a rapidly growing global network.

Recruiter: Arshad Shaikh

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Bots Take the Wheel

🤖 Strategic Contribution Tracker

The Problem: Your strategic work gets buried in operational noise. When promotion time comes, you can't quantify your strategic impact because it's scattered across projects, emails, and informal conversations.

The Solution: Automated strategic contribution tracking using Slack, Jira, and Asana integration.

Use Case 1: Strategic Decision Documentation

• Set up Slack workflows to automatically capture messages containing strategic keywords ("roadmap," "strategy," "executive," "business impact")

• Route these to a dedicated Asana project with automatic tagging by strategic category

• Generate monthly summaries of your strategic contributions with business impact metrics

Use Case 2: Cross-Functional Leadership Scoring

• Use Jira automation to track when you're tagged as a collaborator on projects outside your direct team

• Measure frequency of strategic stakeholder interactions through calendar integration

• Auto-generate leadership influence scores based on cross-functional project involvement

Use Case 3: Strategic Initiative Impact Tracking

• Create Asana templates that automatically calculate business impact metrics for strategic projects

• Set up automated quarterly reports showing strategic outcomes vs. operational tasks

• Generate promotion-ready summaries of strategic contributions with quantified results

This system runs in the background, building a comprehensive record of your strategic work that you can reference during performance reviews, promotion discussions, or job interviews.

Visionary Voices 

📝 Sheryl Sandberg's Operations-to-Strategy Masterclass

Sheryl Sandberg's journey from McKinsey consultant to Facebook's COO demonstrates how operational professionals can leverage their delivery expertise to drive transformational business success. Her career offers a compelling blueprint for operations and delivery professionals seeking to expand their impact beyond execution into strategic leadership.

Building the Operational Foundation

Sandberg's career began at McKinsey & Company, where she developed the analytical rigor and systematic problem-solving approaches that would define her leadership style. At McKinsey, she learned to break down complex challenges into manageable components and develop data-driven solutions—core skills for exceptional delivery management.

Her transition to the U.S. Treasury Department as Chief of Staff to Secretary Larry Summers proved pivotal. Coordinating policy initiatives across multiple government agencies, she learned that operational excellence isn't just about efficiency—it's about creating sustainable systems that enable organizations to achieve broader missions. This experience taught her what she calls "operational empathy"—understanding not just what needs to be done, but how different stakeholders will be affected by change.

The Google Transformation: Operations Meets Innovation

When Sandberg joined Google in 2001 as VP of Global Online Sales and Operations, AdWords was generating modest revenue. Under her leadership, it became a multi-billion dollar engine. Her approach exemplifies how delivery professionals can drive strategic value by reimagining entire business models rather than simply optimizing existing processes.

Sandberg established systematic customer acquisition processes, developed scalable onboarding systems, and created feedback loops for continuous improvement. Her operational background proved crucial during Google's explosive growth—she built systems that became more efficient as they scaled, maintaining startup agility while achieving enterprise-scale operations.

Her success stemmed from combining quantitative analysis with qualitative customer insights, creating what she called "data-driven empathy." This approach enabled decision-making frameworks that balanced efficiency with effectiveness, demonstrating how operational professionals can translate between technical and business languages.

Facebook: Scaling Through Operational Discipline

As Facebook's COO starting in 2008, Sandberg brought operational discipline to an engineering-driven culture, transforming the platform's massive user base into sustainable revenue while preserving user experience. Her methodology offers valuable lessons for operations professionals taking on leadership roles:

Systems Thinking Over Point Solutions: Rather than quick revenue fixes, Sandberg built comprehensive advertising platforms that evolved with user behavior. She understood that sustainable success requires creating systems that generate long-term value.

Process Innovation Through User-Centric Design: She revolutionized digital advertising by focusing on user experience, creating processes that balanced multiple stakeholder needs while driving innovation through operational excellence.

Cultural Integration: Most importantly, Sandberg integrated operational disciplines into Facebook's culture without stifling creativity, establishing metrics and accountability without bureaucratic overhead.

Under her leadership, Facebook's revenue grew from $272 million in 2008 to over $85 billion by 2020—demonstrating the transformation of operational capabilities into strategic competitive advantages.

Leadership Philosophy for Operations Professionals

Sandberg's leadership philosophy centers on three principles that delivery professionals can immediately apply:

Building Capabilities That Scale: Think beyond current project deliverables to consider how your work creates long-term organizational capabilities. Every process improvement becomes an investment in scalable success.

Creating Systems That Outlast Your Tenure: Build organizational capabilities that continue generating value regardless of personnel changes, transforming from indispensable operators into architects of sustainable success.

Developing Others While Advancing Yourself: View knowledge transfer and capability building as core responsibilities, recognizing that operational excellence multiplies when shared.

The Strategic Advantage of Operational Thinking

Sandberg's "Lean In" work demonstrates how operational professionals can apply analytical skills to broader challenges. Her approach to workplace gender equality combines data-driven analysis with systematic process improvement—the same methodologies that drive successful project delivery.

Her career proves that operational expertise—systematic thinking, process optimization, stakeholder management, and execution excellence—provides unique advantages in strategic leadership. The skills delivery professionals possess are exactly what organizations need to navigate increasing complexity.

Your Path Forward

Sandberg's success demonstrates that operational professionals don't just support strategic initiatives—they can lead them. Her journey from McKinsey analyst to Silicon Valley executive shows how delivery excellence becomes strategic leadership when combined with systems thinking and stakeholder empathy.

Read "Lean In" to understand her systematic approach to career development and organizational change. Watch her Harvard commencement address for insights on building growth-oriented careers. Study her Facebook transformation through case studies that show how operational discipline drives business success.

Most importantly, apply her systems thinking to your current role—identify how your operational improvements create value beyond immediate deliverables, and communicate these broader impacts to stakeholders.

Recognize that your operational expertise is strategic advantage. Sandberg's career proves that delivery professionals can become transformational leaders. The question is whether you're ready to leverage your operational foundation to drive strategic impact.

✨ Weekly Recommendations

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Professional Development

📚 Decoding Your Hidden Strategic Work

A comprehensive research report reveals that the vast majority of professionals are performing work above their official job level, with verifiable statistics showing a widespread gap between titles and actual strategic contributions across industries.

The headline statistic: role-reality disconnect

80% of workers experience a discrepancy between their job description and actual duties, with 46% reporting high levels of discrepancy, according to a University of Washington study on role expectations and job descriptions. This foundational research demonstrates that role misalignment isn't an edge case. It's the dominant workplace reality.

The implications extend far beyond simple job description accuracy. Workers experiencing high discrepancies showed significantly elevated job-related stress levels, suggesting that unrecognized strategic work creates both performance and wellness challenges.

The Strategic Work You're Already Doing:

1. Strategic Planning (Disguised as "Project Planning")

• What you call it: "I create project roadmaps and timelines"

• What it actually is: Strategic resource allocation and risk management

• Strategic reframe: "I architect delivery strategies that optimize resource allocation and mitigate enterprise risk"

2. Stakeholder Management (Disguised as "Communication")

• What you call it: "I keep stakeholders updated on project status"

• What it actually is: Strategic relationship management and influence without authority

• Strategic reframe: "I build strategic partnerships across functions to drive alignment and accelerate business outcomes"

3. Process Improvement (Disguised as "Efficiency Work")

• What you call it: "I streamline workflows and eliminate bottlenecks"

• What it actually is: Organizational design and operational strategy

• Strategic reframe: "I design scalable operational frameworks that enable sustainable growth and competitive advantage"

4. Cross-Functional Coordination (Disguised as "Project Management")

• What you call it: "I coordinate between different teams and departments"

• What it actually is: Strategic integration and organizational effectiveness

• Strategic reframe: "I orchestrate cross-functional initiatives that break down silos and accelerate strategic execution"

5. Problem Solving (Disguised as "Issue Resolution")

• What you call it: "I troubleshoot problems and find solutions"

• What it actually is: Strategic analysis and decision-making under uncertainty

• Strategic reframe: "I analyze complex business challenges and develop strategic solutions that address root causes and prevent future issues"

The Strategic Positioning Audit:

Step 1: Pattern Recognition Review your last 6 months of work. Identify recurring themes in:

• Types of problems you solve

• Stakeholders you influence

• Outcomes you drive

• Decisions you make or influence

Step 2: Strategic Translation For each pattern, ask:

• What business objective does this serve?

• What would happen if this work wasn't done strategically?

• How does this create competitive advantage or mitigate risk?

• What strategic capabilities am I building?

Step 3: Market Validation Research 5 job descriptions for roles you want. Identify:

• Strategic language patterns

• Required competencies you already demonstrate

• Business outcomes they're seeking

• Leadership behaviors they value

Step 4: Strategic Positioning Rewrite your professional materials using:

• Strategic business language instead of operational task language

• Quantified business outcomes instead of project deliverables

• Leadership competencies instead of technical skills

• Future-focused vision instead of past-focused experience

The 80/20 Strategic Career Rule:

80% of your promotion potential comes from 20% of your work—the strategic 20%.

Most delivery professionals spend 80% of their time on operational tasks and 20% on strategic work, but they position themselves based on the 80%. Strategic leaders flip this narrative: they position themselves based on the strategic 20% and frame the operational 80% as strategic execution.

TL;DR:

You're probably already doing strategic work—you just need to recognize it and position it strategically. Use the Strategic Positioning Audit to identify your hidden strategic contributions, then reframe your professional narrative around strategic value rather than operational tasks. The market pays for what it recognizes, so make your strategic work visible and valuable.

How I can Help

Wanna chat IRL? Connect with me on LinkedIn and we can set up some time.

The Delivery Career Decoder shows why you’re already qualified for more—and how to prove it.

I love feedback. If you have topics you want to see? Or thoughts or ideas on how to serve the community better, please hit reply or email [email protected].

Until next time,

The Business of Delivery

Quiet moves. Bold Careers.