Country Director at Kidogo Innovations Limited

Your responsibilities will include:

Lead Strategic Planning efforts and Manage our growth:

• Contribute to annual and long-term strategic planning efforts.
• Identifying & driving critical strategic and operational adaptations to our operating model to match and enable our ambitious growth plans.
• Provide thought partnership to the CEO & board around strategic decisions, partnerships, operations etc.
• Contribute to East Africa expansion plans & strategies for the future.

Build the Systems and Culture necessary to make the strategic vision come to life operationally:

• Spearhead intentional experimentation and prototyping culture align with our 2022 theme “Intentional Learning at Scale”. This includes overseeing the creation of prototypes, setting the intention and goals for each and tracking progress and learning with the teams.
• Build and maintain systems and processes to support our franchising model, including rapid quality improvement, training & mentoring, and quality assurance at scale.
• Shaping team’s routines, norms and culture to enable significant growth and scale, e.g. communication, decision making, etc.

Overseeing all Kenya operations:

• Ensuring creation and tracking of departmental work plans and budgets.
• Working closely with all departments and teams, supporting them in working towards meeting their goal.
• Strengthening organisational controls & communication to ensure efficiency & effectiveness.
• Closely supporting the Partnerships team to solidify and execute child care collaborations with partners (e.g. government, employers, etc).

Coaching and developing the management team & organisation as a whole:

• Help build the capacity of the Management Team by providing coaching, regular feedback, and rigorous performance management.
• Support professional development through organizing team training/offsites, mentoring high potential talent, and creating a pipeline of future leaders.
• Bring your own skills and experience to bear, particularly in regards to articulating what it takes to scale a service organisation such as this one.

Who we are looking for:

• You are passionate about creating social impact.
• You have been involved in designing or refining an efficient operational model for scale.
• You have at least five years of experience in senior management positions and have been involved in organizations at the tipping point of scaling.
• You have considerable experience working with low-income communities in Kenya, preferably in the urban informal settlements.
• You have previous experience managing a dynamic team, with a track record of helping people achieve ambitious goals.
• You have the solid financial acumen to ensure adequate resource allocation and efficiency, including budgeting, negotiating with suppliers, and financial management.
• You have strong past results in creating and implementing processes, the ability to influence adoption in the team and iterating based on what you’re learning.
• Preferably, you have some previous experience leading prototyping, lean testing, and human-centred design type work to drive learning (or are excited to learn these techniques).
• You are a leader with a passion for transforming bold ideas into actionable strategies and relish the challenge of applying a range of approaches to answer complex questions.
• You can draw upon your network of social impact organisations and professionals to support Kidogo’s mission & vision.

You will fit in the well with the Kidogo Family, if you are:

• A natural leader: You inspire your teammates to stretch themselves, challenge their assumptions and constantly improve through direct mentorship, and serve as an example. You create a sense of mutual accountability, inspire action and follow up effectively to ensure momentum.
• Fiercely compassionate: You exercise empathy and treat all people with respect and dignity. You combine the urgency of getting things done while appreciating the complexities of working in informal urban settlements.
• Visualize the path to the goal: You are highly strategic. You understand how decisions get made; you can take in multiple inputs simultaneously, make decisions with imperfect information and chart a path forward for your team. You stay focused on the most important things, not getting lost in the noise.
• Adaptable / Agile: You have a willingness to learn and adapt. You are comfortable revisiting and refining aspects of a program and iterating based on lessons learned during the development lifecycle.
• Intra-preneurial: You see solutions, not challenges. You have a gritty, experimental spirit and actively find opportunities to reach our goals in more effective ways by exercising creative resourcefulness.
• Doer: You are efficient, organised and use your time effectively. You can juggle many projects of varying urgency and importance simultaneously and can prioritise effectively. You seamlessly balance both urgent short-term tasks with larger long-term projects.
• Wear multiple hats: You can see problems from different perspectives and can balance competing demands (i.e., sustainability and quality). You are also comfortable juggling detailed tasks one minute and more significant strategic questions the next.