DIRECTOR

The director Role

The Garage Group seeks experienced yet entrepreneurial-minded business leaders adept at leading cross-functional teams through brand strategy and innovation challenges. Directors are the lifeblood of our organization – responsible for relationship-building with F1000 clients, diagnosing problems and designing custom solutions, leading client teams (as well as our internal cross-functional team) through high-touch, never-executed-the-same-way engagements, while managing the project P&L. We are a small company, and operate in a highly collaborative environment. For us, that means you must be comfortable wearing different hats and rolling up your sleeves to work quickly to jump in to help your teammates or push client teams forward.

About Us:

The Garage Group is a boutique consulting firm, on a mission to keep existing brands relevant in today’s uncertain market. But the way we go about it is different. We are laser-focused on driving change through people, in service of building resilient organizations. We are battle-tested in unlocking courage within leaders to chart a new path forward — reframing traditional research as “learning” to define the problems most ripe for solving, infusing external perspective to spark new possibilities, and relentlessly pursuing iterative stakeholder feedback to pressure-test the most desirable, feasible, and viable solutions.
We are a small, but mighty team. We work remotely, but spend increasingly more time in-person with clients. We’re on a growth trajectory and are looking for folks who share our mindsets, exemplify our operating principles, and want to be part of a team that has fun while doing tough work that requires our own courage and perseverance (and the ability to laugh and pivot when things go wrong). 

Core Buckets of Responsibility: 

• Client Management & Business Development: Our Directors are the face of The Garage Group – externally engaged in the market, attending industry events, and highly networked. As a professional services company, our work is engagement-based, requiring a constant pulse on emerging opportunities where F1000 target companies have needs that The Garage Group can help with. 
• Consulting Engagement Design: For 15+ years, TGG has honed our battle-tested playbook, applying it across 400+ F1000 brands across industries and a range of business challenges. Through practical, case-based learning, our Directors are responsible for building expertise in knowing when and where to leverage each “tool” or workstream in our toolbox. Directors are in the driver’s seat from the initial pitch through proposal development, helping our clients understand how each custom approach delivers on their objectives and often cast a broader vision for a multi-phase approach.
• Leading, Facilitating & Coaching Client Teams throughout Applied Workstreams: Once an engagement is booked, the Director is responsible for leading both internal and external cross-functional teams from start to finish. This includes upfront expectation setting, clear communication, execution of right-sized deliverables with superior storytelling, strategic thinking that stays committed to the outcome, managing necessary pivots with ease– all while adeptly managing TGG resources with an ownership mindset and listening for the next client challenge to solve.
• TGG Team Leadership: Directors lead internal cross-functional teams throughout client engagements. They are also responsible for coaching and managing Associates who serve as their partner across all aspects of the project.

What We’re Looking For:

• At least 10+ years in brand management, insights/market research, innovation, strategy, or account management, ideally with a subset of those years successfully navigating F1000 bureaucracy in a professional services or consulting capacity OR in-house on the brand/client side. 
• Superior strategy and storytelling in partnership with senior leaders.
• Someone who is often described as a “natural leader,” a “people person,” an “innovator,” a “change-maker,” or an “outside-of-the-box thinker.”
• Someone who thrives in a work environment full of ambiguity and freedom. 
• A self-motivated, initiative-taker who can and prefers to manage their own time. 
• Proven experience navigating–and leading teams through–complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
  
• Must have a proven track record of strong relationship-building with internal and external stakeholders. 
• Direct experience–and high comfort in–facilitating effective, collaborative work sessions, and managing divergent perspectives and personalities.  
• Strong financial management and project P&L ownership experience.
• Although we are looking for leaders, our work requires a high level of comfort living “in the weeds,” literally rolling up your sleeves to DO the work alongside both our client and our internal TGG team. 
• Must have demonstrated time management skills and the ability to manage multiple projects, meet deadlines, and pivot as priorities change - always managing to the outcome versus the process.
• Proven business development capacity. 
• Although specific industry experience is not required, you must have demonstrated tactical skills across a range of our core business challenges, including but not limited to: concept writing, strategy action plan building, insights/market research, customer journey map creation, etc., relevant across CPG, Food & Beverage, Financial Services, or Consumer Healthcare. 
• Passion, excitement, and love for both leading people and the work!

Job: Director
Compensation Range: $115,000 - $175,000 Annual Salary with Benefits
Capacity: Full-Time
Location: Primarily remote, but ideally located in Greater Cincinnati/Columbus, Chicagoland, Greater Minneapolis, Denver
Travel: Candidates must be open to 30% travel 

How We’ll Know If It’s Working Out:

• Our Clients will feel the support and confidence in you as more than a consultant – instead, as a trusted confidant. Confidants continually clarify expectations, have the courage to challenge bias and hold F1000 leaders accountable, competently navigate corporate politics, and prepare tight, compelling, and actionable deliverables.
• Our internal, cross-functional team will…
  • Be “wowed” by your ability to strategically manage the many moving pieces and pivots with ease. They will believe in you as a leader who consistently delivers phenomenal client work while stewarding TGG’s brand and resources. They’ll see this through confidence in your competence, leading with empathy and an open mind, and communicating effectively with next-level storytelling that brings everyone along.
  • Feel a strong sense of trust, seeing you not only as their leader or manager but also as a great coach. They feel your daily investment in their professional growth and development, encouragement, and practice of our “giving ongoing feedback as a gift” culture. 
• You personally live out our values every day – curiously pushing yourself, your peers, and your teams to get out in the market, stay on the pulse of cross-industry trends, try new things, and take risks in service of growth. 
• Your client engagements hit key milestones and KPIs. 
• You are operating in your strengths daily, and your excitement is contagious!

What’s in it for you: 

• Exposure across a breadth of F1000 brands, across industries in both a B2B and B2C capacity – from CPG and Food & Bev to Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, and Consumer Healthcare. From Day 1, you will build an unmatched arsenal of “lived” case stories and trusted relationships with F1000 leaders. 
• Ongoing practice honing your competence and expertise in highly political, high-stakes environments. 
• Collaboration with a cool team of like-minded leaders and cross-functional partners committed to “taking the hill” together daily. 
• Contributing to the growth of The Garage Group as a company, as a key partner in scaling our services and increasing the impact we can have on corporate leaders in service of building more resilient organizations.
• P&L Ownership and Management of an internal TGG Team. 
  
• FUN, autonomy to invent, try new things, and engage in creative problem-solving in service of leading client engagements through uncertainty.