Innovation Practice Lead

Job Title: Innovation Practice Lead
Salary: £76,194 - £106,400 (depending on location)
Location: Manchester or London
Hours:  Full time
Working Pattern: Hybrid, 40% (or two days) in office.

About us

We’re on an exciting journey to transform our Group and the way we’re shaping finance for good. We’re focusing on the future, investing in our technologies, workplaces, and colleagues to make our Group a great place for everyone. Including you!
 

About this opportunity:

As Lloyds advances into the next phase of its Strategic Transformation, we are establishing a new Group Innovation function. This function will act as a catalyst across Business Units and functions, developing the methods, tools, and culture needed to deliver disruptive, innovative solutions that will shape the future of our organisation.

What you’ll do
 

As an Innovation Practice Lead, your initial priority will be to establish and operationalise the Venture Lead Guild, a new community of practice for Venture Leads across the Group. This will involve setting up the Guild’s operating model, onboarding Venture Leads, and developing their knowledge of the new Spark methodology and intrapreneurial skills.  Once the Guild is established, your ongoing focus will shift to overseeing and developing the quality of Innovation Coaches and Venture Leads, supporting them to deliver disruptive innovation across Horizon 2 and 3, and ensuring high standards in venture delivery and capability building.

• Venture Lead Guild: Establishment & Launch (Initial Focus)

• Establish and lead a Venture Lead Guild (community of practice) to grow internal capability at scale.

• Set the vision and operating model for the Guild: curriculum, mentoring, standards, certification and demo forums.

• Engage and influence the Business Units and Functions across the group to commit resource to support the establishment of the Guild.

• Identify and onboard Venture Leads, develop their knowledge of the Spark methodology, and build their capability to operate as intrapreneurs.

• Develop a pipeline of accredited Venture Leads and Innovation Coaches; track progression and placement on ventures.

Ongoing Capability Development & Quality Oversight

• Oversee the evolution of the Guild, ensuring it remains the logical home for Venture Leads.

• Track progression and ensure continuous development of Venture Leads and Coaches.

• Provide ongoing support and quality oversight to ensure high standards in venture delivery.

Team Enablement (Lean Startup Coaching)

• Coach Venture teams through discovery, problem/solution fit, MVP and market fit phases, to balance their focus on Viability, Feasibility and Desirability.

• Help venture teams design and execute experiments and MVPs that maximise validated learning while minimising cost and cycle time.

• Embed evidence-driven decision making (assumptions, hypotheses, test backlog, learning cards) and ensure clear Continue / Pivot / Kill recommendations.

• Help teams navigate corporate constraints such as risk, compliance, and stakeholder alignment.

Stage Gate Coaching & Investment Readiness

• Prepare teams for VC-style stage gates with crisp narratives of evidence, traction metrics, unit economics and risk mitigation.

• Standardise artefacts (opportunity briefs, experiment plans, business model and value proposition canvases, investment cases) to drive comparable decisions.

• Facilitate Innovation Venture Board reviews, ensuring transparent Continue / Pivot / Kill outcomes.

Practice & Method Ownership

• Own and continuously improve the ‘Spark’ playbook, toolkits, templates and training pathways used by Venture Teams.

• Select and govern enabling tools (e.g., experiment tracking, portfolio views) and define quality standards for evidence.

• Codify and publish case studies and re-usable patterns to accelerate future ventures.

Operational and Strategic Support

• Partner with Business Units to identify and develop strong Venture Leads, building overall venture team capability.

• Support and coach Venture Leads through each phase, ensuring consistent application of governance standards and stage-gate criteria.

• Track and report on key practice metrics, providing actionable insights for teams and stakeholders.

• Benchmark practices with leading venture builders and adapt patterns to our context.

What you’ll need

• Demonstrable experience applying Lean Startup in corporate or startup environments; preferably having operated as a Venture Lead to drive disruptive innovation.

• Proven experience of coaching teams through venture building and pitching for budget.

• Experience in navigating stage-gate models and innovation governance frameworks.

• Comfort working in ambiguous, fast-paced environments with limited resources and able to simplify complexity, and focus teams on valuable learning.

• Demonstrated success in establishing and operationalising communities of practice or guilds, including onboarding, curriculum development, and process embedding.

• Skilled at influencing without authority and aligning diverse stakeholders to decisive actions.

• Effective change leadership, driving adoption of new methods, tools, and culture across teams.

• Strong facilitation, coaching and storytelling skills.

• Strong experience in corporate innovation, venture building, accelerator leadership, product discovery, or startup founder/coach roles.

• Experience establishing communities of practice/guilds and developing curricula or training pathways.

About working for us

Our focus is to ensure we're inclusive every day, building an organisation that reflects modern society and celebrates diversity in/all its forms.

We want our people to feel that they belong and can be their best, regardless of background, identity or culture.

We were one of the first major organisations to set goals on diversity in senior roles, create a menopause health package, and a dedicated Working with Cancer initiative.

And it’s why we especially welcome applications from under-represented groups.

We’re disability confident. So, if you’d like reasonable adjustments to be made to our recruitment processes, just let us know.

We also offer a wide-ranging benefits package, which includes:

• A generous pension contribution of up to 15%

• An annual bonus award, subject to Group performance

• Share schemes including free shares

• Benefits you can adapt to your lifestyle, such as discounted shopping

• 30 days’ holiday, with bank holidays on top

• A range of wellbeing initiatives and generous parental leave policies

Ready for a career where you can have a positive impact as you learn, grow and thrive? Apply today and find out more!