Commercial Excellence PM Lead

Senior Manager, Digital & Commercial Excellence PM Lead, Orthopaedics

Johnson & Johnson announced plans to separate our Orthopaedics business to establish a standalone orthopaedics company, operating as DePuy Synthes. The process of the planned separation is anticipated to be completed within 18 to 24 months, subject to legal requirements, including consultation with works councils and other employee representative bodies, as may be required, regulatory approvals and other customary conditions and approvals. Should you accept this position, it is anticipated that, following conclusion of the transaction, you would be an employee of DePuy Synthes and your employment would be governed by DePuy Synthes employment processes, programs, policies, and benefit plans. In that case, details of any planned changes would be provided to you by DePuy Synthes at an appropriate time and subject to any necessary consultation processes.

DePuy Synthes is recruiting for a Senior Manager, Digital & Commercial Excellence PM Lead, Orthopaedics, located in Raynham, MA OR New Brunswick NJ OR West Chester PA OR Palm Beach Garden FL

Position Summary

The Senior Manager, Digital & Commercial Excellence Project Management (PM) Lead will serve as the founding leader of the DePuy Synthes Process & Systems (DSPS) capability, a cross-functional, data-driven system for optimizing commercial processes to drive enterprise performance. Inspired by world-class operational excellence models, this role represents a deliberate incubation of a continuous improvement capability within DePuy Synthes. The intent is to prove the model at focused scale and, if successful, expand it into a broader enterprise function over time.

Reporting into the Head of Global Digital Experience & Commercial PMO, this leader will operate as a hands-on program manager, lean facilitator, and internal consultant -- simultaneously standing up the DePuy Synthes Systems & Process (DSPS) operating model while directly driving a portfolio of high-priority commercial process improvement initiatives across the business.

In addition to the DSPS portfolio, this role will serve as the operating backbone of the Digital & Commercial Excellence Leadership Team (DCELT) itself, owning the design and management of the DCELT's meeting structure, cadence, agenda governance, and operating rhythm to ensure the senior-most commercial leaders are working together effectively, making decisions efficiently, and maintaining accountability for strategic priorities. This dual mandate--enabling both the leadership team's effectiveness and the enterprise's process improvement engine--positions this role as a critical connective point between commercial strategy and operational execution.

In addition, this role will serve as a structured facilitator for evaluating external innovation opportunities and emerging market models, ensuring the organization applies the same rigor and data-driven discipline to 'build vs. buy vs. partner' decisions and go-to-market model evolution as it does to internal process improvement.

This is not a traditional PMO role. It requires someone who can architect a leadership operating model, facilitate structured problem-solving workshops, apply lean and Six Sigma methodologies in real business contexts, build credibility through early wins, and create the governance scaffolding that allows this capability to scale. The successful candidate will be comfortable operating with ambiguity, building from the ground up, and influencing senior leaders without direct authority, while maintaining the rigor and discipline required to sustain measurable impact.

Key Responsibilities

Digital & Commercial Excellence Leadership Team Operating Rhythm & Effectiveness

Design, implement, and continuously refine the Digital & Commercial Excellence Leadership Team's meeting structure, including recurring cadences (e.g., weekly, monthly, quarterly), agenda frameworks, decision-rights protocols, and pre-read/follow-up disciplines.

Serve as the DCELT's operating manager--owning agenda development, ensuring topics are strategically prioritized, tracking action items and decisions to closure, and holding the team accountable to commitments made in-session.

Establish and maintain a DCELT annual operating calendar that integrates strategic planning cycles, business reviews, DSPS sponsor reviews, and key enterprise milestones into a coherent rhythm.

Develop and enforce meeting effectiveness standards, including clear purpose statements for each forum, defined attendee roles, time management, and structured decision-making frameworks to maximize the return on leadership time.

Create visibility tools (e.g., DCELT dashboards, strategic priority trackers, cross-functional dependency maps) that give the leadership team a consolidated view of commercial performance, initiative progress, and emerging risks.

Facilitate DCELT working sessions on cross-cutting strategic topics, ensuring productive dialogue, clear outcomes, and documented next steps.

Serve as a trusted advisor to the Head of Global Digital Experience & Commercial PMO on DCELT dynamics, identifying opportunities to improve how the team collaborates, communicates, and drives accountability.

DSPS Operating Model & Capability Build

Design and stand up the DSPS operating model, including sprint cadences, charter/dashboard standards, sponsor review rhythms, and escalation protocols.

Develop and codify the DSPS methodology toolkit, including Problem Solving Process (PSP), Value Stream Mapping, Voice of the Customer, Transactional Process Improvement (TPI), Visual & Daily Management, and Kaizen event frameworks, adapted for the DePuy Synthes commercial context.

Create standardized templates, storytelling tools, and reporting formats that enable project leads to consistently frame problems, quantify gaps, and communicate progress to executive sponsors.

Build a capability-building curriculum to train project leads and core team members in lean Six Sigma fundamentals, raising the organization's baseline process improvement literacy over time.

Portfolio Management & Governance

Own the end-to-end DSPS portfolio, and maintain portfolio-level visibility through consolidated dashboards, milestone tracking, status reporting, and risk/barrier escalation, ensuring the Digital & Commercial Excellence Leadership Team has a clear line of sight into progress and impact.

Facilitate sponsor kick-offs, sprint reviews, and periodic sponsor reviews.

Establish and enforce charter discipline across all workstreams, ensuring each initiative has SMART goals and objectives, defined scope, a named sponsor and project lead/DRI, a core team, and planned impact metrics.

Facilitation & Hands-On Problem Solving

Serve as the primary facilitator for structured workshops, including value stream mapping sessions, process prioritization exercises, "Art of the Possible" design workshops, and test-and-learn sprints.

Apply lean techniques directly to commercial processes, and champion an "on the ground" philosophy, spending time in the field, with customers, and alongside the teams doing the work to validate hypotheses with objective data rather than assumptions.

Drive early, visible wins that build organizational credibility for the DSPS approach and create momentum for broader adoption.

Performance Management & Data-Driven Decision Making

Define and implement transparent KPIs for each DSPS workstream, ensuring impact is quantified in terms of cycle time reduction, cost savings, margin improvement, customer satisfaction, or other measurable outcomes.

Partner with data & analytics teams to leverage centralized data assets for portfolio-level decision-making, process diagnostics, and performance benchmarking.

Build the reporting and storytelling infrastructure that enables the Head of Global Digital Experience & Commercial PMO to represent DSPS progress on the Digital & Commercial Excellence Leadership Team with clarity and confidence.

External Innovation & Market Model Evaluation

Establish a structured framework for identifying, evaluating, and prioritizing external innovation opportunities (e.g., emerging technologies, digital health solutions, strategic partnerships) aligned with DePuy Synthes' commercial strategy.

Lead or facilitate cross-functional evaluation sprints to assess the viability, scalability, and strategic fit of external solutions, applying lean experimentation and stage-gate principles.

Conduct market model benchmarking and analysis, including go-to-market structures, pricing/contracting approaches, and channel strategies, to identify opportunities for DePuy Synthes to evolve its commercial model as a standalone entity.

Partner with Strategy, Business Development, R&D, and Commercial Operations to ensure external innovation insights are integrated into the DCELT's strategic agenda and decision-making.

Coordinate pilot programs or proof-of-concept initiatives with external partners, ensuring clear success criteria, governance, and a path to scale or exit.

Synthesize external innovation and market model findings into executive-ready recommendations, leveraging the DSPS storytelling and reporting infrastructure.

Stakeholder Management & Influence

Operate as the day-to-day DSPS point of contact for executive sponsors across the Digital & Commercial Excellence Leadership Team, building trusted relationships and ensuring alignment between sponsor expectations and project execution.

Coordinate across a complex stakeholder landscape spanning Commercial Operations, Finance (FP&A), Supply Chain, R&D, Sales, Marketing, Pricing & Contracting, and platform-level business unit leaders.

Navigate the unique dynamics of a separation environment -- balancing urgency to stand up standalone capabilities with the discipline to design processes that will endure beyond Day 1.

Scaling & Institutionalization

Document lessons learned, playbook