KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Executive Partnership & Strategy Execution
• Partner with the Segment Leader to shape leadership meeting agendas and business reviews around the segment's most consequential priorities, ensuring discussions lead to clear decisions, accountable owners, and timely follow-through.
• Facilitate annual business planning and strategy enablement, helping ensure critical initiatives are appropriately resourced, supported by clear measures of success, and executed with discipline.
• Lead Policy Deployment, connecting long-term strategy with breakthrough priorities and actionable plans across the segment.
• Work with senior leaders to identify performance gaps and barriers to execution, applying VES approaches to address root causes and sustain improvement.
• Support acquisition integration by aligning VES deployment and capability development with the needs of newly acquired businesses.
Business Performance & Continuous Improvement
• Partner with business leaders to advance growth, innovation, and operational performance through targeted improvement initiatives.
• Strengthen the management practices that help teams identify issues early, make informed decisions, and follow through on commitments, including daily management, standard work, and structured problem-solving.
• Use business performance reviews, operational reviews, and Policy Deployment discussions to surface gaps, focus improvement efforts, and assess progress against priorities.
• Guide high-impact kaizen activity and strategic growth initiatives, including Growth Rooms and Obeya, ensuring improvements are embedded in how teams work.
• Identify successful practices across operating companies and create opportunities for leaders to share, adapt, and scale them.
Leadership, Culture, & Organizational Capability
• Serve as a coach and thought partner to senior leaders, strengthening their ability to apply VES to business challenges and lead sustainable change.
• Define and execute the segment's VES capability and certification roadmap, aligning development priorities with current business needs and emerging strategic requirements.
• Lead and develop the VES organization, mentor operating company VES leaders, and build succession pipelines that support the segment's long-term needs.
• Ensure certified practitioners and trainers are effectively deployed to deliver business impact and strengthen capability across functions.
• Build an active VES leadership community that encourages collaboration, benchmarking, and shared learning across businesses and geographies.
• Manage the VES function's budget and talent priorities, aligning resources with the areas of greatest business need.
LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES
• Strategic and commercial judgment: Takes a general management view of the business, connecting customer needs, growth opportunities, and operational priorities. Identifies where focused improvement can deliver the greatest business impact.
• Executive influence and partnership: Earns credibility with senior leaders through sound judgment, practical insight, and constructive challenge. Builds alignment across businesses and functions and drives accountability through influence.
• Hands-on problem-solving: Moves comfortably between strategic discussions and direct engagement with teams where work happens. Uses data and observation to identify root causes, challenge assumptions, and develop practical solutions.
• Change leadership: Builds commitment to new ways of working and sustains progress through ambiguity and competing priorities. Encourages experimentation and thoughtful risk-taking while maintaining a clear focus on results.
• People leadership and communication: Builds trust, develops others, and creates an inclusive environment where diverse perspectives and candid discussion are valued. Communicates complex issues clearly and translates insights into focused action.
EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE
• A minimum of 10 years of experience leading and applying continuous improvement principles across growth, innovation, and lean, with a demonstrated record of sustained business results.
• Senior leadership experience in a multinational organization, gained as an enterprise business system leader or operating company executive with substantial responsibility for continuous improvement and business performance.
• Deep practitioner expertise in lean/ continuous improvement principles or a comparable enterprise business system, including daily management, standard work, structured problem-solving, and kaizen.
• Demonstrated experience leading Policy Deployment workshops, executive or President-level kaizens, and certified practitioner development roadmaps tied to strategic business priorities.
• Demonstrated experience working directly with teams at Gemba to strengthen problem-solving, build capability, and sustain improvements through hands-on learning.
• Significant hands-on practitioner experience in new product development and the application of continuous improvement methods to innovation processes.
• A proven record of building and developing teams, coaching senior leaders, and strengthening organizational capability across functions and geographies.
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Science, Business, Marketing, or Operations required. A master's degree in a related field or MBA is preferred.
#LI - AS1
US ONLY:
The below range reflects the range of possible compensation for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future. An associate's position within the salary range will be based on several factors, including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, seniority, geographic location, performance, shift, travel requirements, sales or revenue-based metrics, any collective bargaining agreements, and business or organizational needs.
The compensation range for this role is $300.000 - $350.000 USD per year. This job is also eligible for Incentive Pay.
We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.
Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company's sole discretion, consistent with the law.
US residents: In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.
