The posting
“Real people, real partnership, real impact.”
At Oceans, we believe in the power of strategic leadership to drive organizational excellence. As Chief of Staff, you will work alongside our Head of Diver Success to ensure our business priorities remain on track and our vision is realized. This role is about more than just managing tasks; it's about being a trusted advisor, a problem solver, and a catalyst for change.
The Chief of Staff role is a unique blend of strategic and tactical responsibilities. You will be a strategic and tactical partner to the Head of Diver Success. This involves aligning initiatives, driving projects forward, and ensuring seamless communication across all departments. You will play a pivotal role in turning ideas into action.
The primary responsibility of this role will be to work horizontally across the organization, ensuring shared business priorities stay on track. This includes facilitating cross-functional collaboration, driving execution of strategic initiatives, and ensuring alignment between departments. You may manage others as part of your broad, horizontal remit, contributing to the overall improvement of the company.
While your core responsibility is horizontal coordination across the organization, you may also be called upon to assist with executive or vertical tasks on occasion (less than 20% of your time). This ensures you have a comprehensive understanding of all facets of our business and can contribute effectively to our overall success.
Accountability
You will have four primary areas of focus, with the expectation that you will be measured on your ability to minimize Diver-related client churn. That means:
Strategic Alignment and Execution:
- Work closely with the Head of Diver Success to define, prioritize, and execute strategic initiatives.
- Align initiatives and drive execution, ensuring shared business priorities stay on track.
- Develop and implement frameworks to track progress, identify bottlenecks, and ensure timely completion of projects.
- Facilitate cross-functional collaboration to align departmental goals with overall business objectives.
- Lead key special projects end-to-end, collaborating across teams to deliver results without operational disruption.
Operational Efficiency:
- Streamline processes and workflows to enhance productivity and reduce inefficiencies.
- Proactively audit workflows to identify operational gaps, friction points, and areas for process improvement, designing scalable solutions before they impact client or Diver experience.
- Identify and address operational challenges, providing innovative solutions to improve performance.
- Oversee communication and information flow within the organization.
- Design, build, and maintain shared institutional knowledge systems to standardize delivery quality and eliminate single-point-of-failure risks as the organization scales.
Stakeholder Management:
- Act as a liaison between the Head of Diver Success and other departments, ensuring clear communication and alignment.
- Build and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders, both internal and external.
- Represent the Head of Diver Success in meetings and discussions, providing strategic insights and recommendations.
- Facilitate effective decision-making by providing comprehensive information and analysis.
- Partner with the Council of Chiefs of Staff to drive complex, cross-departmental projects and ensure seamless strategic alignment across the broader organization.
Leadership Support:
- Provide strategic counsel to the leadership on critical business issues.
- Anticipate and address potential challenges, offering proactive solutions.
- Support the leadership in building and maintaining a positive organizational culture.
- Cultivate an inclusive, engaged team culture in Diver Success to keep members supported and aligned with Oceans' core values.
- Lead change management alongside Diver Success leadership, helping the team navigate organizational shifts, scaling and transitions with empathy and clarity.
Colleagues
Your ability to build strong relationships and foster effective communication will be crucial to your success in this role. You will work closely with the CEO and senior leadership team, as well as collaborate with various departments across the organization. Internally, you’ll work closely with our Training, HR, Pod Leaders and Integration teams to help our clients get the most from the Oceans talent network. Where it makes sense to expand our relationship, you’ll also work with ouDivers.
While working cross-functionally, this role reports to our Head of Diver Success.
Skills and Qualifications
At Oceans, we believe in T-shaped people with one area of deep vertical expertise and broad horizontal interests. As a Chief of Staff the legs of your T should be in deeply understanding the current needs of the organization, the Diver Success function, and the strategic direction of the organization, making sure those needs are clearly addressed and accurately communicated. Your arms should extend to an understanding of how our Clients’ businesses function, how Oceans can grow, and where global talent fits into that growth. Previous experience working with global talent, business operations, and client-facing roles will be an asset.
Diversity of experience is core to Oceans. You are expected to be able to manage, work with, and serve people from a broad range of backgrounds in an inclusive manner that supports both individual and collective dignity.
The role will include opportunities to demonstrate skills in each of the following areas:
- Strategy - Business Model: How do you look beneath the surface of a business to uncover insights that shape planning and resourcing, rather than just tracking the data?
- Strategy - Special Projects: When handed an ambiguous, cross-functional initiative, what is your approach to owning it end-to-end? How do you drive stakeholder alignment and execution to ensure business impact?
- Organization - Culture and Comms: How do you ensure teams understand the "why" behind the "what"? What is your approach to shaping internal tone and aligning people across a scaling business?
- Organization - Operations: How do you approach designing, improving, and scaling internal processes?
- Enablement - Decision Support: When time is limited and stakes are high, how do you frame options, surface tradeoffs, and present clear recommendations to leadership?
- Enablement - Information Flow: How do you ensure the right people have the right information at the exact right time? What systems do you rely on to act as the connective tissue that keeps the entire organization aligned?
Role Specifications
This is a hybrid role and you should expect to be in-person roughly 1 to 2 days a week in Colombo. Information about our benefits and compensation philosophy, along with an opportunity to update our understanding of both market and individual factors, will be available during our offer process.
About Oceans
Our company’s business model is simple: helping people in the developing world access employment opportunities in larger markets, at wages that support their individual dignity. And so we make money when our clients and Divers are happy working together. We welcome the chance to discuss the complementary parts of our business during your interview process and encourage questions about where we are and where we are going.
Want to learn more about our recruitment process, what to expect from interviews, and possible outcomes? Check out [The Dive].
