Operations Director at Lafayette Resources

Role purpose

The individual will be responsible for all core operations within East Africa. Both directly and indirectly, the Operations Director is responsible for managing one of the largest and most diverse teams within the East African operation.

This includes a central and distributed headquarters team that supports and monitors the academies’ operations and designs all the processes and systems that are critical to the success of each and every academy.

The Operations Director is ultimately responsible for the critical performance of our entire network of 350+ schools across Kenya and Uganda. This includes operations, supply chain, IT, internal audit, and retail. You will be responsible for ensuring every school operates effectively.

That school staff are supported, provided with the correct tech assets and supplies. That the school facilities are maintained. That revenue is collected effectively, that uniform, school feeding and other programmes are running well. That instructional delivery runs effectively.

This is a high-impact role for someone who loves taking on challenges in large scale – we employ 5,000+ employees across East Africa.

Operations Director Job Responsibilities

• General management of the warehouse operations and strategic planning on activities to provide feasible solutions to challenges that may arise while involving yourself in practical work on the floor on receiving, arranging and dispatching of materials.
• Responsible for all operational performance indicators of our academies, including but not limited to:
• improving adherence and compliance to existing systems and processes
• Striving for operational excellence in a resource-constrained environment
• Continually iterating and improving systems o cost of headquarters support per pupil educational outcomes as measured by academic testing programme
• Do or lead every job in the entire academy operations and support to some extent. No job is too big or too small.
• Manage a diverse support team including customer care, quality assurance, IT, programme managers, procurement, warehousing and logistics.

Qualifications

• At least 8+ years of post-undergraduate, full time work experience
• Work experience managing a multi-unit retail environment
• Work experience developing and managing a culture of total focus on customer satisfaction
• Work experience drastically improving the productivity and reducing cost of a product or service
• Work experience managing and coordinating several teams to deliver on a tight schedule
• Work experience in emerging markets
• Record of building data-driven operational systems
• Record of strong academic performance from a leading undergraduate and, if attended, graduate institution
• Work experience, preferably in operations, as an employee at any company that has rapidly grown in headcount and number of locations, e.g., large scale retail
• Work experience in a highly political industry, where ideological conflict is common and strategy, ingenuity, negotiation and persuasion are necessary for success
• Experience of management consulting a plus

Key skills

• Strong communication skills. Ability to effectively present information in one—on—one and small group situations to customers, clients, and other employees of the organization.
• Proven ability to use basic mathematical skills.
• Strong problem-solving abilities.