Practice Delivery Lead, Centre for Expertise
ATB Financial · Edmonton
At ATB, we exist to make it possible for our clients, team members and communities. Our purpose is more than aspirational. It's a real commitment we live every day through our values (what we call the ATB ID).
Life at ATB is about more than work. In fact, we’re consistently recognized as one of Canada's top employers thanks to our high-care, high-performance culture, upheld by the three commitments we make to our team members:
Impact in action: No matter where you are in the organization, you're empowered to make an impact in the lives of our clients and communities.
Thrive together: We want you—the unique, authentic you—to feel safe and celebrated at work. We're on a continuous journey to build the most flexible and inclusive programs.
Ready for tomorrow: We want to enable your success through interesting and challenging work, performance enablement, and learning and development.
About the Role
Operating as a strategic catalyst, diplomatic facilitator, and insight-driven professional, the Practice Delivery Lead in ATB's Centre of Expertise bridges high-level enterprise vision with practical execution. By integrating design-thinking methodologies with strategic analytical practices, the role surfaces client and stakeholder needs to unlock ATB’s expert-led growth and identify distinct market positioning.
Through collaborative workshops and strategic analytical frameworks, the Lead applies ATB's structured methodology to help partners identify, evaluate, and validate niche market specializations and complementary service offerings that showcase ATB’s expertise, and build long-term competitive advantage. The position acts as a vital benchmark for operational quality—advocating human-centered change, streamlining workflows, maintaining governance standards, and crafting value-oriented narratives to empower cross-functional teams in evaluating viability and scaling user-focused practices that generate enterprise value.
Focus:
- Strategic Market Specialization & Opportunity Framing: Combining rigorous strategic analysis with human-centered research to operationalize and facilitate analytical models. Guiding teams to discover, evaluate, define, and validate high-margin specialized market niches where ATB can achieve clear competitive differentiation.
- Design-Led Workshop Facilitation & Strategic Alignment: Applying design-thinking techniques (e.g., journey mapping, empathy mapping, ideation, and rapid prototyping) to design and guide collaborative workshops, alignment sessions, and operational discussions across diverse stakeholder groups.
- Human-Centered Workflow Optimization & Governance: Applying strategic systems thinking to enhance existing SoE workflows, streamline end-to-end service delivery, maintain operational governance, and track progress using balanced performance KPIs.
- Strategic Narrative & Value-Driven Communication: Synthesizing complex data, qualitative insights, and framework outcomes into compelling visual and verbal narratives for frontline teams, key stakeholders, and executive leadership.
- Human-Centered Change Management & Cultural Transformation: Applying empathetic design principles to change management—guiding teams through the cultural and behavioral shifts necessary to adopt standardized evaluation tools, new operating models, and innovative practices.
Accountabilities
Strategic Market Specialization & Design-Thinking Facilitation
- Matrix Implementation & Strategic Analysis: Guide cross-functional teams through repeatable evaluation matrices analyzing macro-environmental trends, market maturity, business capability requirements, profitability, risk, and competitive intensity.
- Human-Centered Discovery & Synthesis: Design and lead discovery workshops leveraging design-thinking tools to synthesize client pain points, qualitative client feedback, economic signals, and internal capabilities—enabling teams to pinpoint targeted, high-margin opportunities.
- Strategic Prioritization & Resourcing Guidance: Facilitate stakeholder alignment around structured prioritization matrix models (e.g., Feasibility vs. Desirability vs. Viability) to help leadership allocate capital, resources, and investments toward high-impact emerging domains.
Operational Facilitation, Service Design & Executive Support
- Cross-Functional Co-Creation: Design and facilitate interactive service-design workshops to align cross-functional partners, map current/future state experiences, resolve operational friction, and drive organic adoption of System of Expertise tools.
- Executive Decision Support & Synthesis: Manage, format, and present strategic options analysis, tactical outputs, framework evaluations, and quarterly/ad-hoc reporting for leadership review.
Practice Delivery, Strategic Governance & Quality Control
- Workflow & Process Optimization: Conduct root-cause and systems analysis to map and continuously improve existing System of Expertise workflows, eliminating bottlenecks, reducing friction points, and increasing delivery speed.
- Data-Driven & KPI Management: Monitor and report on operational KPIs, framework adherence metrics, and service level agreement metrics. Extract strategic trends, signals, and operational risks from quantitative data to inform strategic leadership recommendations.
- Quality Assurance & Design Standards: Serve as the primary authority for quality control, conducting regular reviews to ensure all framework outputs, prototypes, and deliverables meet established SoE standards, strategic guidelines, and governance frameworks.
Human-Centered Change Management
- Navigate Friction with Empathy: Act as a change champion, utilizing empathy-driven approaches to uncover root causes of resistance, guiding teams through the cultural and behavioral shifts of adopting new operating models.
- Impact Assessment, Prototyping & Coaching: Conduct change-impact assessments and iterative feedback loops; design and deliver targeted coaching and rapid pilot sessions to help teams comfortably engage with new framework methodologies.
- Sustainment & Knowledge Architecture: Develop sustainment plans, interactive toolkits, documentation, and training materials to ensure new operational practices and strategic evaluation standards become deeply embedded within ATB.
Strategic Storytelling & Relationship Building
- Narrative & Value Storyteller: Maintain, evolve, and distribute multi-format impact stories across the organization to showcase the tangible value, ROI, and client/employee outcomes generated through the Market Specialization Framework.
- Ecosystem Relationship Management: Build and maintain trusted internal relationships across the enterprise to break down silos and foster a highly collaborative, innovative ecosystem.
Knowledge, Skills and Experience
Key Characteristics:
- Facilitator & Design Thinking Practitioner: Exceptional ability to guide groups through complex evaluation processes, design-thinking exercises (ideation, journey mapping, assumption testing), and drive actionable outcomes without relying on direct authority.
- Strategic & Analytical Thinker: Comfortable breaking down complex business problems using strategic analytical frameworks, alongside quantitative metrics.
- Empathic & Collaborative Co-Creator: Deep empathy for both external clients and internal team members, with a proven ability to build trust, co-create solutions, and guide teams through operational shifts.
- Active Listener: Listens deeply and naturally notices implicit needs, unstated objections, and unspoken dynamics during cross-functional sessions.
- Translational & Service Design Mindset: Excels at translating high-level business strategy and abstract ideas into practical daily steps, service blueprints, clear workflows, and structured documentation.
- Clear & Visual Communicator: Skilled in creating high-impact visual presentations and clear documentation that drive awareness and strategic clarity across diverse executive and operational audiences.
- Resilient, Adaptive & Autonomous: Self-starter who thrives in navigating ambiguity, using structured design experiments and critical thinking to resolve operational roadblocks.
Required Qualifications:
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Strategy, Operations Management, Organizational Development, Service Design, Communications, or a related field. Training or certification in Design Thinking (e.g., IDEO, LUMA, Hasso Plattner Institute) or Strategic Analysis is strongly preferred.
- Experience: 10+ years of experience in operational delivery, strategic analysis, workshop facilitation, process optimization, human-centered design, framework implementation, or change management roles—preferably within a Center of Excellence framework.
- Strategic Analysis & Workshop Facilitation: Proven track record of guiding cross-functional teams through structured analytical frameworks, strategic decision-making matrices, problem-framing, and design-thinking co-creation workshops.
- Human-Centered Change & Coaching: Demonstrated success in leading teams through behavioral and process changes, conducting user feedback loops, prototyping change interventions, and coaching teams to adopt new operating models.
- Storytelling & Strategic Communication: Strong background in value-driven storytelling, visual communication, strategic synthesis, and creating executive-ready deliverables.
- Analytical & Quality Control Capability: High capability to monitor operational metrics, run strategic evaluation models using data visualization tools, and ensure strict quality control across all deliverables.
Workplace Arrangement
You can work from anywhere in Alberta, but you will be required to attend in-person meetings at either in Calgary or Edmonton as needed.
Don’t meet all the requirements on the list?
A resume only goes so far in expressing who you are and the unique perspectives you bring. If you believe your skills and experience align with the role—but you might not check all the boxes—we want to hear from you. We encourage candidates from all work backgrounds, equity-seeking communities and experience levels to apply. If you’re seeking a career where your drive, perspective and growth are celebrated, we want to hear from you.
We’re dedicated to building a workforce reflective of those within our communities, and a culture where our team members are equipped with what they need to succeed—their way. Part of creating an inclusive workplace is recognizing our role in advancing Truth and Reconciliation. We are committed to meeting and exceeding the standards set out in the Partnership Accreditation in Indigenous Relations program created by the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.
What happens next?
If you are shortlisted, you’ll hear from us after the posting closes. Check out our How We Hire page to learn more about our hiring process. If you need any accommodations throughout this process, please let us know at talentteam@atb.com
Stay in touch
We’re excited that you’re interested in a career with ATB. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram to learn more about what our team is up to.