Director General of the Education and Youth Board

Duties: The Government Office Competence Centre for Top Managers announces a public competition for the position of Director General of the Education and Youth Board.

The purpose of the Director General of the Education and Youth Board (Harno) is to ensure the effective implementation of Estonia's education and youth policy and to lead one of Estonia's largest implementing agencies. The Director General's task is to strengthen the organization's capability and maintain it in a state where tasks, priorities, scope of activities, and funding can change rapidly. We are looking for a leader who will create a clear and sustainable operating model for Harno, ensuring quality management, flexible adaptability, and enabling the organization to be a reliable partner in implementing policy and assessing its impact.

Main challenges in the coming years:

1. Developing Harno into a strong, flexible, and resilient implementing organization

Ensure Harno's ability to effectively implement Estonia's education and youth policy in a changing activity and funding environment. To this end, an operating model must be created that defines the organization's core capabilities, ensures service quality, and allows for rapid adaptation to new tasks, priorities, and funding opportunities. The goal is to shape an organization that can grow, reorganize, or reduce its scope of activities if necessary, while maintaining management quality, efficiency, and effectiveness.

1. Strengthening Harno's role as a policy implementer and strategic partner

Strengthen Harno's position as a professional implementing agency that carries out political goals and provides systematic and development-oriented feedback to policymakers. To this end, cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Research and other partners must be promoted, the division of responsibility and roles between policymakers and implementers must be clarified, and a functional feedback system must be created to assess policy implementability and impact.

1. Developing the organization's management quality

Develop the organization's management, work organization, and digital capability in a way that supports effective and high-quality policy implementation. To this end, modern management and working methods must be introduced, internal cooperation strengthened, data-drivenness increased, and a unified organizational culture shaped. The goal is to create an organization with very high adaptability that operates effectively in both stable and rapidly changing environments.

Main objectives for the first 6–12 months:

1. Creating the operating model for Harno's next development stage

Comprehensively assess Harno's activity, funding, and management model and make proposals regarding the organization's long-term operational logic. The goal is to define Harno's core tasks and core capability, to which new activities can be flexibly added or existing ones reshaped in the event of changes in priorities, tasks, and funding opportunities.

1. Clarifying the cooperation and responsibility model

Make proposals to clarify the principles of cooperation, roles, and responsibilities of Harno, the Ministry of Education and Research, and other key partners. The goal is to strengthen Harno's role as a professional implementing agency that effectively carries out goals received from policymakers and, as an active partner, provides high-quality feedback on the results and impact of activities and offers solutions to prevent and resolve bottlenecks.

1. Increasing organizational flexibility

Make proposals for developing organizational management, work organization, and cooperation in a changing activity environment. The goal is to increase the readiness of managers and employees to deal with uncertainty, changing expectations, and reorganizations, and to shape an organizational culture that supports change management, cooperation, and rapid adaptation.

In return, we offer: The opportunity to work in the public service as a member of a unified team for the benefit of the Estonian state.

Other requirements: Requirements for the candidate:

• Master's degree or equivalent level of education;
• At least 5 years of experience in managing an organization or a structural unit;
• English language proficiency at least at C1 level;
• Competencies according to the competence model for top managers in the public service (see https://tippjuhid.riigikantselei.ee/kompetentsimudel).

The Education and Youth Board is the main implementing organization for Estonia's education and youth policy, through which a large part of the state's education and youth sector strategic directions and programs are implemented, services in the field are provided, and investments are made. The organization's activities affect the entire Estonian education and youth system and hundreds of thousands of learners, teachers, parents, and young people.

We are looking for a leader who will wisely direct Harno to its next development stage, strengthen the organization's capability and flexibility, and help create an effective cooperation model between policymakers and implementers. The position offers the opportunity to lead one of Estonia's largest and most diverse implementing agencies and to combine strategic thinking, strong leadership, and effective implementation of changes, so that Harno becomes an organization that is simultaneously stable and flexible, reliable and innovative, and ready to fulfill even the most demanding implementation tasks in the future.

Preferred candidate characteristics:

• Experience in managing a large organization, supra-organizational change, or complex reorganizations;
• Experience in setting strategic goals and effective implementation;
• Experience in organizational management in a changing activity or funding environment and the ability to make considered prioritization and resource decisions;
• Ability to create and maintain effective partnerships and lead cooperation with various stakeholders, decision-makers, and partners;
• Understanding of the differences between policy formulation and implementation;
• Persuasive self-expression and communication skills and readiness to represent Harno before the public and in the media;
• Good stress tolerance and adaptability, and great decisiveness.

We expect the candidate to have a security clearance for access to state secrets or the readiness to apply for one.

Possibility of working from home: No