Farmer Insights Manager at Komaza Kenya

The Farmer Insights Team helps Komaza truly understand our farmers and how we can constantly improve services for them. We use the best in behavior change research to guide our program delivery and communications strategies, and we use Human Centered Design to listen to, build empathy for, and design solutions in partnership with our Farmers. Our work inspires thoughtful program updates and communications design.

Komaza is looking for a Farmer Insights Manager who can serve as our internal behavior change specialist and liaise with all the teams and departments needing critical questions about our Farmers answered, and who can manage a small team of Farmer Insights Associates leading individual Design Challenges.

True behavior change lies at the heart of the Komaza model. Our tree farms serve as a unique long-term savings vehicle for our farmers, generating an additional return of 150% of their equivalent income over the life of a single farm. However, the journey from planting to harvest can be a stressful time. Across this decade our farmers experience the hope of a better tomorrow, but also uncertainty, fear, and conflict.

Duties for the Farmer Insights Manager Job

• Create Komaza’s framework and approach to farmer behavior change by leveraging and adapting the best of behavior change research.
• Develop Komaza’s Farmer Insights process based on research on best practices, as well as insights from successes/failures within comparable organizations and industries.
• Translate research and frameworks on behavior change and Farmer Insights into simple educational materials for internal training on best practices.
• Manage and coach Farmer Insights Associates as they define their Design Challenges and spend long days in the field talking with Farmers. This will include:
• Mapping the Farmer Insights process & providing guidance on best practices (for sequencing & collaboration between Farmer Insights team members)
• Distilling big questions into a sequence of smaller answerable questions.
• Maintaining extreme focus on current questions and avoiding drift.
• Troubleshooting the Farmer Insights process; solve problems that arise.
• Coaching Associates on specific process and performance improvements.
• Spend 20-30% time in the field (~50% for first 6 months), gaining a deep personal understanding of Komaza’s program and target population, and providing direct oversight & coaching to Farmer Insights Associates.
• Develop and manage a Farmer Insights Request System to collect and organize farmer insights requests from other departments to create and prioritize Design Challenges based on importance/urgency, with input from Komaza leadership.
• Create reports and PPTs to communicate new Farmer insights and recommendations.

Farmer Insights Manager Job Requirements

• 5+ years of deep experience with ethnographic research, specifically Human Centered Design, but also other customer-centric product and service design processes.
• Deep professional experience implementing and improving upon the latest behavior change research and frameworks as outlined in the works ofNudge, Switch, Predictably Irrational, Thinking Fast & Slow, etc.
• Ability to use experience to envision Komaza’s customized approach to using Human Centered Design as a system for driving Farmer insights.
• Experience managing teams of 4+ people, directly coaching on process and performance improvement, and managing for collective outcomes.
• Ability to work collaboratively across diverse and fast moving teams and departments, and able to understand complex and undeveloped challenges to distill them down into approachable Design Challenges through collaboration with department leaders and Farmer Insights Associates.
• Ability to see the forest for the trees – to not get overwhelmed by an endlessly growing list of questions, and to draw subtle connections between them in order to create integrated Design Challenges.
• 2-5 years experience at startups, consulting or other professional services firms.
• A behavioral economics geek who finds people endlessly fascinating and reads books and articles and listens to podcasts about behavior change in your free time.
• Flexible and scrappy with the drive to do whatever necessary to get the job done.
• Self-directed and intellectually curious – you know how and when to seek feedback in the pursuit of continuous improvement.
• Growth-obsessed with a strong desire for personal and professional development.
• A collaborative problem solver who thinks outside traditional constraints and seeks the opinions of other teammates and departments in the pursuit of ever-better solutions.
• Experienced working with smallholder farmers, and familiar with rural economic development and commercial business models generally, in order to understand the complexities of Komaza’s model operating at the intersection of the two.
• Fluent in English and Swahili – other Kimijikenda languages would be a bonus.