Expansion Project Leader

Why we will love you

As a person you are passionate about creating an IKEA fit for the future. You get energized by increasing customer value, driving business growth and contributing to overall success and results through people. You get inspired by working together in an ever-changing multi-dimensional environment. Leading through co-creation with colleagues and other IKEA units motivates you and you share and live the IKEA culture and values

As an Expansion Project Leader you will:

- Be responsible for the realization of the project objectives according to the specific project brief of one or several Expansion Projects.
- Contribute to development and continuous improvement of the way of working in Expansion.

To be successful in your role, you:

- Have good analytical and administrative skills
- Are able to take responsibility from start to end, achieve goals and keep deadlines
- Have excellent leadership capabilities - ability to lead, coach and influence/challenge a large team of co-workers and colleagues (internal stakeholders).
- Have strong interpersonal skills with the ability to build trustful relationships and to motivate others
- Are able to communicate verbally, visually and in writing in an inspirational way with IKEA tone of voice
- Are able to prioritize and make decisions with speed and simplicity
- Are able to take a holistic view of a global organization and identify business opportunities accordingly
- Have strong Project Management skills
- Have experience from managing change in a complex business environment
- Have a good knowledge and understanding of whole retail IKEA Expansion process (e.g. Business Case Project Design phase and Commercial Brief)
- Strong experience of working and steering through Business Navigation partners the financial tools
- The position requires to be fluent in both written and spoken English and ideally Dutch.
- Ideally, you also have a Communication & Interiors background

Next to that, we also expect you have:

- Retail experience
- Multicultural experience
- Minimum 2 years of experience in leading and influencing teams / cross functional project teams
- Minimum 3 years as a Project Leader in retail
- Minimum 3 years of experience of developing businesses and delivering results

In this position you report to the IKEA Belgium Expansion manager.

A day in your life with us

The scope and the responsibilities linked to your assignments will be:

- Accountable for the projects budget
- Responsible to deliver a project within time, budget and quality
- Responsible to make final decisions in a project
- In the lead to take a leading role in the expansion planning and build up activities for the pre-projects
- Responsible to ensure a proper reporting of projects to the line organization
- Document lessons learned through the project phases as well as a secure final report after projects completion:

- Responsible for steering group reporting
- Work across different functions and lead people in different projects
- Coordinate the planning process with Group Expansion
- Take lead in working across functions within Ingka Group and collaborate with other IKEA units
- Take lead in driving an open and sharing climate, being a role model of the IKEA values
- Lead positive change, and contribute to building a more unique, inclusive and accessible IKEA - guided by the People and Planet Positive commitments

Our team within Ikea

With the customer at the heart of everything we do, Expansion takes responsibility for developing and implementing the strategic expansion plan in the country. Expansion acts upon business needs based on insights and optimize accessibility to enable maximum penetration of the country. Expansion is responsible for implementing our retailing concepts and securing that we fully utilize our assets in the new world of IKEA - all at lowest cost, with economy of scale and sustained profitability.

Why you will love us ?

From the deep forests in Sweden, we have spread our culture and values around the world. At the heart of our offer are our beautiful home-furnishing products and solutions, made with care for our planet, reaching millions of customers. At the heart of our business, are our wonderful co-workers representing diversity in all dimensions and passionate for life at home. We all contribute with our uniqueness and we want to grow and develop together. Our vision, “to create a better everyday life for the many people” inspires and guides us in everything we do. This is IKEA.