Head Of Product at Educate!

Job Description

The Head of Product will be reporting to the Managing Director and Co-founder of NawiriPro. This role is crucial to the organization hitting its milestone to get product-market fit. As a result, the functions and objectives of the role are subject to change, and the ideal person for this role will be comfortable with and excited to take on a dynamic and evolving role. You can be part of building something that can provide millions of youth with sustainable income by running a successful informal sector business. 

You could be the perfect fit for this role if you:

1. Have successfully launched a product to market fit from the early stages of a business.
2. Have superb business acumen and have a sound understanding of business strategies.
3. Enjoy starting with the customer and work backwards by continuously obsessing over customers to ensure a superb customer experience.
4. Raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion by up-skilling the team and take their role in coaching others seriously to aid the business to reach its goals.
5. Enjoy making many decisions and actions because speed matters in our business line, but ensure you are taking calculated risks. 
6. Understand that constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention.
7. Enjoy operating at all levels, staying connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath you.

Performance Objectives 

Product Strategy & Roadmap

1. Setting the product vision and strategy; owning the roadmap, and must prioritize building what matters most to achieve the strategic goals and initiatives behind the product.
2. Develop the business case for the product and advocate for funding and manage the budget
3. Defining the release process and coordinating all of the activities required to bring the product to market and be transparent about your prioritization and roadmap process.
4. Lead the development, implementation, and evaluation of strategic, tactical and operational customer engagement plans, marketing strategy and initiatives to align with LP’s vision and strategies
5. Lead specific customer research programs, dialogue and other forms of engagement to understand key concerns and issues and inform review and enhancement of customer services and service delivery models
6. Monitor business and process metrics to measure and manage customer service effectiveness.
7. Develop customer incentive and retention strategies to ensure customer loyalty.
8. Act as a product evangelist to build awareness and buy in throughout the company.

Execution of Product Operations

1. Encourage and build on a culture of customer-centricity in the entire team.
2. Drive the overall business operating capabilities to surpass customer satisfaction, retention and strategic goals.
3. Develop and establish an implementation process for new product rollout and delivery of recent product changes to customers.
4. Set comprehensive goals for business growth and success based on the interpreted data and user funnel metrics.
5. Works closely with the Managing Director to understand the product’s nuances and design decisions to inform the development of suitable implementation process and practice. 
6. Conduct product audits to monitor and report on adoption, performance, and growth. Use these reports to inform the business strategy.
7. Ensure the team avoids not delivering its product roadmap milestones due to misconceptions of risk to the overall strategy.

Product Metrics and Monitoring Tools 

1. Build systems or processes to develop rapid experiments that lead to prototypes & pre-tests of customer experiences.
2. Identify and track the behavioural change process for our product and share feedback with the product owner.
3. Research best practices, tools and processes to understand what user metrics will inform that we are developing a value-based product.
4. Build and oversee the improvement of the experiences customers have with organizations, with the goal of increasing customer satisfaction.
5. Design and build user and product metrics and integrate them into a 3rd party dashboard
6. Ensure documentation and routine sharing of knowledge and experiences across teams and leadership.

Leadership on Product Team

1. Drive the ongoing development of a customer-centric culture across the organisation, supported by process frameworks and responsive customer service systems to embed best practice customer-centric behaviors.
2. Identify market opportunities and define product vision and strategy.
3. Promote the application of global UX standards and strategy-aligned decision-making within teams.
4. Share customer data on product engagement with global leadership for annual and strategic planning sessions.
5. Empower and grow strong product teams to adopt and apply global customer engagement, UX standards & tools.
6. Ensuring all departments’ vision is created and communicated to all to build cohesion.
7. Leading all internal communication through MMM, All hands call, etc.
8. Mentor, coach & develop staff using a supportive and collaborative approach: ensuring transferable skills are learnt to ensure we hit our business goals.   

Qualifications 

1. The ideal candidate has worked in a very early-stage startup that has achieved product-market fit.
2. Minimum eight years of work experience
3. Experience managing human resources, finances, operations and strategies.
4. Dynamic experience is highly preferred, with demonstrated ability to operate well in complex and fast-changing environments.
5. Familiarity with the lean startup approach is strongly preferred
6. Experience working with diverse stakeholders and managing many priorities
7. Passion for NawiriPro’s mission is a must, but past work in education or youth development is not required. We value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from people with a variety of backgrounds. Background working with youth in the informal sector or digital product would be an asset.
8. You fit our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is NawiriPro About? below)