• Country: New York, USA
• No of vacancies: N/A
  
• Salary: Both
• Organization: UNDP
• Gender: Both 
• Deadline: 2024-01-04

• Strategic plan development
• Implementation and Development of Corporate Planning Systems
• Coordination & Communication Support
• Knowledge Management & Partnerships
• Representational Activities

Corporate strategic planning

• Support the development of UNDP’s strategic plan and its reviews and assessments, including the midterm review.
• Collaborate with key stakeholders to articulate, define, and refine strategic objectives.
• Ensure alignment of the strategic plan with the organization’s mission, vision, and long-term goals.
• Facilitate engagement and communication across departments to ensure coherence in organizational planning efforts.

Improvement of Corporate Planning Systems 

• In coordination with the Strategy Lead, the Planning Specialist partners with cross-functional internal UNDP teams in improving the corporate planning and priority-setting systems to enable effective implementation of the Strategic Plan.
• Coordinates cross-functional teams to distill information and insights from the corporate planning system to inform on priority settings to senior management through the provision of high-quality analytical outputs and policy advice.
• Develops recommendations that effectively informs decision-making in line with the Strategic Plan and UNDP’s overall mandate and priorities.
• Facilitates the alignment of results and resources across all UNDP business units within UNDP’s corporate results framework.
• Facilitates continuous improvement in the corporate planning system design and implementation to reduce the burden of corporate reporting while also delivering real-time analytical products and reporting system capabilities.

Coordination & Communication Support

• Establishes effective working relationships with counterparts at all levels in UNDP and manages them effectively to facilitate knowledge sharing in support of the design and implementation of corporate planning and priority-setting systems for UNDP.
• Supports Country and Regional Offices in the quality assurance for corporate results definition and reporting.
• Establishes effective working relationships with counterparts in other UN System agencies, funds and programmes, and with bilateral and multilateral partners to facilitate knowledge sharing and effective coordination of planning and priority-setting processes, in support of more coherent system-wide mechanisms and processes for planning with the UN System.
• Advocates for broad communication and outreach planning policies that promote compliance with UNDP’s mandate, accountability and reporting requirements.

Knowledge Management & Partnerships

• Keeps abreast of the impact and effectiveness of UNDP’s corporate management systems and connects that knowledge and lessons learned to future development and improvement.
• Participates in knowledge management and practice networks as appropriate.

Representational Activities

• Represents the Executive Office when required with the presentation of the strategic plan to UNDP audiences and/or external audiences to support wider implementation and interpretation.
• Advocates for the corporate planning system and how it connects to the mandate and vision of the Executive office.
• Interprets the impact of the corporate planning system on the policy and management function of the Organization to ensure that back office and front office functions are fully integrated.

Institutional Arrangement

The Planning Specialist reports to the Strategy Lead in the Executive Office’s Strategy and Futures Team.

• Achieve Results: LEVEL 4: Prioritize team workflow, mobilize resources, drive scalable results/strategic impact
• Think Innovatively: LEVEL 4: Easily navigate complexity, encourage/enable radical innovation, has foresight
• Learn Continuously: LEVEL 4: Create systems and processes that enable learning and development for all
• Act with Determination: LEVEL 4: Able to make difficult decisions in challenging situations, inspire confidence
• Engage and Partner: LEVEL 4: Construct strategic multi-partner alliances in high stake situations, foster co-creation

• Strategic Thinking – Strategic Thinking: 
  • Ability to develop effective strategies and prioritized plans in line with UNDP’s objectives, based on the systemic analysis of challenges, potential risks and opportunities; linking the vision to reality on the ground, and creating tangible solutions
  • Ability to leverage learning from a variety of sources to anticipate and respond to future trends; to demonstrate foresight in order to model what future developments and possible ways forward look like for UNDP
• Effective Decision Making – Effective Decision Making:
  • Ability to take decisions in a timely and efficient manner in line with one’s authority, area of expertise and resources
• Communications – Communications: 
  • Excellent writing and editing skills.  Open to feedback to enhance quality of writing.
  • Able to summarise complex topics in a clear, readable and succinct style
  • Able to adapt communications’ tone and substance to the specific audience
  • Able to prepare and present authoritative advice
  • Skilled at building a narrative around a set of data and its accompanying visualizations to help convey its meaning in a powerful and compelling fashion
  • Comfortable with working rapidly and to multiple deadlines
• Effective decision making – Effective decision making:
  • Able to take decisions in a timely and efficient manner in line with one’s authority, area of expertise and resources
• Co-creation – Co-creation: 
  • Able to work with a diverse group of stakeholders, understand their interests and perspectives and tap into them as a creative source, creating collaboratively towards mutual ends
• Design thinking – Design thinking: 
  • Able to identify and challenge assumptions and biases, and to generate new perspectives and frames that help redefine the problem, solution and opportunity
  • Able to work with incomplete information, ambiguity and opposing views, needs and constraints and synthesize them into solutions that are viable, technically feasible and useful
  • Understand that change is non-linear and unpredictable; and that complex problems need a holistic approach
• Tech literacy – Tech literacy: 
  • Able to apply or adapt digital tools to create new insights or develop solutions.
• Strategic engagement – Strategic engagement: 
  • Able to capture and sustain interest and agreement of senior management and secure their buy-in to new perspectives or strategic recommendations.
• Effectiveness – Effectiveness: 
  • System-wide approaches to strategic planning and results

Desired skills in addition to the competencies:

• Familiarity with UNDP’s corporate planning processes
• Be flexible in handling change, and adopt new ideas, approaches and ways of working
• Participate in, support, contribute to or drive meaningful change in UNDP
• Be comfortable with ambiguity and effectively managing multiple demands

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