Director Of Communications, Global Partner Solutions (Gps)

Overview
Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is anchored on embracing a growth mindset, where anyone can change, learn, and grow. Four attributes allow this growth mindset to flourish: obsessing over what matters to our customers, becoming more diverse and inclusive in everything we do and create, operating as one company instead of multiple siloed businesses and lastly, making a difference in the lives of each other, our customers and the world around us. You can help us build our culture and achieve our mission.
The Global Partner Solutions team mission is to build and sell Microsoft Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud applications, services, and devices with partners, empowering people and organizations to achieve more.Building on this organizational mission, the Communications & Events team's purpose is to develop and deliver a storytelling platform at scale to showcase industry, partner and customer innovation, growth and opportunity with Microsoft Cloud and AI.
The Industry & Partner Sales (IPS) Communications and Events team needs an experienced, dynamic and creative Director of Communications to support the lead Corporate Vice-President (CVP)/Chief Partner Officer in the Global Partner Solutions (GPS) organization. This role will report to the Director of the GPS Executive Comms team, and will be responsible for leading both external and internal communications for the CVP/Chief Partner Officer who leads our partner business. You will have an opportunity to work with senior leaders on the GPS leadership team, help drive thought leadership and impact for these leaders and their commercial partner segments. This is a strategic role that provides significant opportunity for executive visibility, cross-team collaboration, a breadth of communication experience and business impact.
Responsibilities
Orchestration and Agency Management

• Drives collaboration with others on the development and production of Communications materials and deployment of Communications tactics. Proactively includes relevant others to inform content and messaging. Engages with internal and external stakeholders to meet objectives. Leads and directs agency teams as needed. Drives decision making in determining need for agency partnership, choosing an agency and managing agency relationships. Leverages technical expertise and knowledge of successful campaigns in managing work of self and others. Ensures adherence to Microsoft standards.

Communication Strategy Setting and Planning

• Drives communication planning and strategy, focusing on critical priority areas. Enhances thought leadership to strengthen Microsoft's position as a trusted partner. Contributes to innovative campaigns while generating momentum for Microsoft's offerings. Mentors others in the execution of tactics to support overall strategy, ensuring consistency of voice across messages and channels. Participates in business planning discussions as appropriate. Translates value proposition into effective communications strategies and storytelling that resonate with target audience(s). Understands, segments, and targets audience needs and adapts communications strategies accordingly. Scales messages appropriately for a given effort, including expertise in the levers to use to achieve scale and planning for scale from the outset. Embeds diversity and inclusion (D&I) throughout strategy and execution. Demonstrates thought leadership around mechanisms to achieve brand perception change.

Storytelling and Messaging

• Leads stories across local, area, and corporate teams in fresh ways that generate positive perceptions towards Microsoft. Collaborates across teams to develop and drive story telling opportunities by using data and insights. Leads teams to develop and drive stories in fresh ways that generate positive perceptions towards Microsoft. Guides others to determine the format of stories. Leverages expertise to determine what format is most appropriate and meaningful for a story and target audience(s). Attends to cadence of storytelling (e.g., duration, evolution), including content development and curation to land a story. Ensures confluence of content and audience across stories. Creates narratives based on messaging frameworks that drives content development and deployment. Uses trends and forecasting to develop and land stories that may take time to manifest.

Execution of Communication Strategy

• Takes responsibility for the bill of materials and ensures alignment to the strategy and adherence to business objectives. Creates ideas for and develops collateral materials (e.g., decks, posts, talking points) for use in a range of Communications initiatives and events. Makes cause and effect connections to ensure content is consistent across the channels with which Microsoft is connected to a given audience. Understands how audience is being addressed by others and the appropriateness of formats (e.g., Webinars, podcasts, posts, core materials for field) for one-to-one (1:1) and one-to-many (1:many) engagements. Takes responsibility for whole bill of materials and experiences. Recommends and develops frameworks and commensurate collateral. Solicits feedback and iterates as appropriate. Modifies narratives in real time based on reaction/response. Tests effectiveness of messaging. Demonstrates expertise in available channels, which channels to leverage, and what to advocate for in terms of messaging. Ensures work is complementary and not duplicative or conflicting with others' efforts. Understands standardized tools and templates available and uses them appropriately.

Stakeholder Management

• Conceptualizes and develops content to educate, guide, and advise internal stakeholders, customers, and partners on communications strategy and tactics. Mentors others on best practices in guiding and advising stakeholders. Deepens expertise in stakeholder groups and individuals and leverages that understanding in execution of tasks. Mentors others in developing stakeholder expertise. Proactively solicits understanding of perspective, goals, and desired outcomes of stakeholders. Establishes, refines, and manages expectations and priorities. Establishes decision making criteria and principles at outset to drive priorities and expectations. Defines and clarifies roles and responsibilities with others to prevent gaps in delivery. Ensures alignment on strategic intent as foundation for execution of tactics. Establishes rhythm of business (e.g., cadence, intent, content to keep stakeholders informed and up to date). Escalates and resolves escalations appropriately. Recognizes and takes action to be broadly inclusive of perspectives and styles in a manner that suits stakeholders. Engages in business strategy discussions to ensure alignment. Facilitates among parties to bring to consensus on given issues (e.g., product marketing and engineering). Gathers and shares feedback to enhance and improve offerings and processes.

Reputation Management

• Identifies opportunities to enhance reputation and perception and develops content accordingly, including correcting inaccuracies when they occur. Leads action to address potential reputation risk issues. Develops content to mitigate those risks. Identifies opportunities to enhance reputation and perception and develops content accordingly, including correcting inaccuracies when they occur. Acts as a trusted advisor within Microsoft by advancing and protecting the corporate image and reputation. Anticipates, understands, and leverages factors that impact reputation (e.g., privacy, data). Leads effort to determine what is appropriate to withhold, share, continue, or stop based on relevant internal and external factors. Engages with others to manage and conduct research on people, platforms, and forums to determine appropriateness, impact, risk, vulnerabilities, and alignment of values. Recommends and implements course of action accordingly.

Drive and Monitor Messaging and Impact

• Monitors, tracks, and analyzes the impact of and responses to messaging for a given issue. Creates responsive materials as needed. Engages others appropriately in responsive efforts. Leverages insights to inform data-driven proactive approaches. Mentors others in best practices. Shares and socializes insights with stakeholders on reputational impact. Gathers, leverages, and synthesizes data to guide insights and iterate solutions. Mentors others in the use of data to drive outcomes. Sets metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate effectiveness at outset. Evaluates and adjusts as needed. Identifies, develops, and implements measures to evaluate effectiveness and to iterate as content, platforms, and desired outcomes evolve. Communicates findings based on measurement strategy. Recommends and implements improvements accordingly. Drives and evolves strategy informed by data and insights. Drives impact by determining what success looks like, what to measure and why, and aligning to business objectives.

Specialty Responsibilities

• Coaches others and manages the overall comms strategy for an executive leader's internal and external communications aligned to team, business, and organizational objectives, ensuring consistency of voice across messages and channels. Coaches others and manages internal and external event strategy including participation, narratives, and production. Identifies opportunities to enhance reputation and perception and develops content accordingly. Oversees a coordinated organizational approach to managing exec social strategy for their exec and across the full leadership team where needed. Mentors others and may lead a community of comms leads within an organization, providing leadership and coordination for organizational or regional executive comms where needed. May help to oversee communications activity for messaging around varied industries, transformations, and other changes as they arise in partnership with internal and external partners (e.g., CELA, government, and other regulatory parties). Acts as a strategic advisor for leaders to select strategies and channels, and coaches them for development. Acts as a consultative voice for developing messaging for leadership teams (LTs) and acts as a liason to executive leaders to provide guidance on messaging.
• Leads efforts with others to develop materials (e.g., briefing documents, talk tracks, video scripts, PowerPoint slides). Uses storytelling framework and methodology to land key narratives. Conceptualizes and develops guidance, education and advice to internal stakeholders, customers, and partners on communications strategy and tactics. Leads the development and sets best practices for current and relevant templates and materials, building on effectiveness of previously used materials. Identifying needs for new executive materials or contents, translating a vision to create a message and frame it appropriately into net-new materials.
• Independently leads work to identify and take action to address potential reputation risk issues. Leads proactive engagement across Public Relations, Analyst relations, Investor Relations, Global Diversity and Inclusion, and Issues Management minimizing the need for reactive comms. Develops materials, identifies issues and gaps in communication, and recommends courses of action to address urgent and emergent situations in a comprehensive and timely manner. Coaches others in how to approach and navigate urgent and emergent situations. Takes action to maintain global and holistic organizational perspective. Proactively identifies and includes relevant parties to ensure issues are addressed comprehensively across stakeholder groups. Advocates and creates visibility for issues. Anticipates potential scale of impact and takes strategic action accordingly. Participates and coordinates internally with partners to recommend strategic messaging during critical incidents (e.g., responses to rumors, leaked information, health/life threats).
• Collaborates with executives by coaching and preparing them for external speaking opportunities or other outlets of communication. This includes partnering with the communications team for all external media, influencer, and analyst engagements. Shares best practices and mentors others in networking and relationship building. Advises internal partners on press approach and builds trust through transparency and responsiveness that positively impacts relationships with press and influencers. Collaborates with communications colleagues to ensure consistency of One Microsoft messaging of executives.
• Leads and coaches others on strategy development internally for employee communications. Drives an over-arching cadence of Communications and platforms (top of mind, other internal initiatives). Collaborates internally with others to create communications and develop platforms to inform and facilitate employee communications, including negotiating with collaborators to align priorities which may include leader communications like all-hands, SharePoint sites, organization emails, organization changes, etc. Measures, plans, and informs team efforts by utilizing data and insights from internal surveys and feedback channels. Coaches others on and creates content and storytelling that is current and aligned with internal and external relevant corporate guidance (e.g., legal and policy regulations, financial). Drives the adoption and use of new technology and tools to help facilitate two-way dialogue between leaders and employees.

Other • Embody our culture and values
*Note: It was determined that requirements differed among employees in the Executive Communications specialization. These differences are noted where relevant.
Qualifications
Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Business Administration, Marketing, Communications, Finance, or related field AND 6+ years Communications, Marketing Operations, Field Operations, Program Management, Project Management, or related experience
  • OR equivalent experience.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, Finance, or related field AND 8+ years Communications, Marketing Operations, Field Operations, Program Management, Project Management, or related experience
  • OR Master's Degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, Finance, or related field AND 6+ years Communications, Marketing Operations, Field Operations, Program Management, Project Management, or related exp...