Job Description

The Mandate

Newmark is building the operating model that matches its ambition — faster execution, sharper decisions, and a firm that scales without adding friction. The Head of Operational Excellence is the person who makes that real. This role is the firm’s accountability layer between strategy and results: ensuring that every priority the Strategy Committee approves actually lands in the business: on time, with the right people behind it, and with outcomes that move the needle. This is not a chief of staff, a PMO director, or a strategy analyst. This person drives high-impact improvement across a complex, matrixed organization and is accountable when progress does not happen fast enough.

What This Role Owns

Single-sentence accountability: Drive and govern Newmark’s operational excellence agenda — from initiative intake through execution, adoption, and measurable outcome delivery.

• Govern a live, prioritized initiative portfolio — every approved initiative has a named owner, funded budget, milestones, and adoption plan.
• Change lands in the business. Approval is not success. Adoption is success.
• Keep the CSO’s agenda operationally grounded — ensuring direction is executable and flagging when it is not.

Key Responsibilities

1. Lead and Govern the Operational Excellence Agenda

• Maintain the enterprise initiative portfolio (active, pipeline, backlog); run Strategy Committee operations including intake, pre-screen, decision memos, and post-decision tracking.
• Publish and maintain a live initiative dashboard (status, milestones, budget, blockers) updated bi-weekly; enforce accountability without owning authority.
• Audit active work decisively — rescue what can be saved, kill what is stalled.

2. Drive Workflow Redesign

• Conduct structured audits of existing workflows; develop specific redesign recommendations and own implementation: not just the design document.
• Ensure data integrity is built into every redesign; define measurable before-and-after benchmarks for every change.

3. Lead Change Management

• Build and operate a repeatable change management framework; assess change readiness before launch, surface resistance early, and measure adoption — not just deployment.
• Own internal communications on operational improvement — how change gets messaged to producers and business line leaders.

4. Drive Cross-Functional Execution

• Hold technology, finance, and operations accountable to timelines; translate strategic priorities into sequenced operating plans; resolve cross-functional conflicts before they escalate.
• Build and maintain strong working relationships with Strategy Committee members, business line heads, and market leaders.

What You Bring

• Transformation execution and operational excellence experience: has led and delivered high-stakes, enterprise-wide programs in a complex, matrixed organization; owned outcomes, not just workstreams.
• Operational depth: understands systems, org dynamics, budget cycles, and informal levers; Newmark or CRE experience strongly preferred.
• Change management and workflow redesign: has built adoption, managed resistance, diagnosed root causes, and measured behavior change in practice.
• Cross-functional influence: earns credibility through knowledge and consistency, not seniority; can hold peers accountable without direct authority.
• Technology fluency: understands how CRM, workflow automation, and data infrastructure enable operational transformation; can direct and hold technology partners accountable.
• Communication and judgment: operates at the executive level and in the field; knows when to push, pause, or escalate.

This Role Is Not a Fit If...

• You prefer designing operational improvements and handing off execution to others.
• You are most comfortable in an advisory or consulting posture.
• You need positional authority to hold people accountable.

You measure success by deliverables and milestones rather than business outcomes and adoption

Newmark Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: NMRK), together with its subsidiaries ("Newmark"), is a world leading commercial real estate advisor and service provider to large institutional investors and other owners, global corporations and other occupiers, and lenders. Built with purpose and driven by excellence, Newmark's comprehensive platform is uniquely tailored to provide superior outcomes to clients. For the twelve months ended June 30, 2026, Newmark generated revenues of more than $3.6 billion. As of June 30, 2026, Newmark and its business partners together operated from over 195 offices with more than 10,000 professionals across four continents. Learn more at nmrk.com or follow @newmark