Jobs at Plan International

Job Description

• The Regional Director has overall accountability for regional performance and is the CEO representative for influencing, strategic engagement, fundraising and external representation within the region.
• The Regional Director sits on the Plan International Inc Leadership Team, the Plan International Global Team and periodically joins and contributes to International Board and Committee meetings.
• Responsible for the successful development and delivery of Plan International’s strategy, programmes, and operations in the WACA region in-line with Plan International’s global strategy and standards;
• Drive forward our ambition under the global strategy to achieve 100 per cent gender transformative programmes and courageous local, national, regional and global influencing for maximum impact.
• Continuously improve all elements of our operations in the region (grants and sponsorship management, security, supply chain and planning and performance) to ensure they demonstrate excellence in performance and deliver maximum value to all stakeholders including the girls we work with and for, National Organisations, donors, sponsors and partners.
• Ensure that Plan International’s dual mandate in development and humanitarian work is adequately reflected in all the region’s operations.
• Actively advance intersectional feminism and anti-racism and ensure all leaders and staff exercise our values and behaviours.
• Strengthen the line of delegation and information sharing from the CEO of PII through to Country Offices to further promote decision making closest to the point of impact while achieving a strong culture of end-to-end accountability.
• Effectively address non-performance through decisive action. Promote the use of data driven evidence and digital solutions.
• Develop and lead a high performing and value-based leadership team within the region, ensuring that people with the right competencies and values perform in the right roles.
• Managing and supporting the high performance of Directors of Sub Regions, Country Directors, and senior regional staff, strengthening attention to equity, diversity and inclusion within staff teams, and ensuring optimal regional organisational structures.
• Sustaining attention of the whole team on wider strategic resourcing issues and the strengthening of talent pipelines both for leadership roles and technical capabilities.,
• Attracting, developing, progressing, and retaining a highly skilled, motivated and diverse workforce.
• Role modelling and encouraging others to have honest and empowering conversations with individuals about their performance, potential, career direction and development.
• Driving and supporting our succession and talent processes at the global, regional and country levels and ensuring that staff across all levels feel empowered and supported to deliver at their best, feel pride in their work and develop their potential.
• Lead overall strategic planning and alignment, providing direction and leadership for the region, and contributing to leadership of the global organisation.
• The Regional Director plays an active role in helping the Global Hub to align and work effectively with Country Offices, developing products that will be assets to the delivery of the mission at Country Office level.
• Lead the design and implementation of context-specific operating models to ensure Plan remains relevant and delivers increased performance and impact in a rapidly evolving region.
• Strengthen Governance in country offices to achieve the broad-based membership ambitions of the organisation in line with the Locally Led, Globally Connected strategic imperative. As the accountability of Country Offices grows, the Regional Director is responsible for driving the interdependence, synergy and support between Country Office’s so that the region as a whole performs and has overlapping and coherent programmes.
• Agility, transparency and legitimacy. Actively advancing intersectional feminism and anti-racism and ensuring all leaders and staff exercise our values and behaviours. Strengthening the line of delegation and information sharing from the CEO of Plan International Inc through to Country Offices to further promote decision making closest to the point of impact while achieving a strong culture of end-to-end accountability.
• Empowering Directors of Sub-region to effectively address non-performance through decisive action. Promoting the use of data driven evidence and digital solutions
• Identify and manage risk, ensuring that systems and processes are in place to identify, understand, and mitigate risks, as well as monitor and intervene as appropriate.
• Ensure effective acquisition and utilization of resources, overseeing effective fundraising, allocation, and utilisation of resources according to strategic plans, budgets, and financial standards, to ensure that resources are used to add the most value and to support cost effective operations. Monitoring, guiding, and intervening as needed in the use of financial resources.
• Ensure compliance with Plan International standards and that systems and processes are in place to comply with plans, policies and legal requirements. Monitoring compliance of the same and intervening as appropriate.
• Build relationships and communicating internally and externally to strengthen a culture of collaboration, partnership, and learning within the region. Building and maintaining relationships with relevant partner organizations to support strategies and programmes, working with Directors of Sub-Regions and Country Directors to lead internal communications with staff within the region, as well as ensuring that information about the region is available to other parts of the organisation.
• Lead on Representation and Advocacy in the region and in global platforms, working closely with the Chief Strategy and Engagement Officer.
• The Regional Director is also responsible for protecting and promoting the reputation of the organisation in the region. This role jointly oversees the Africa Union Advocacy Office in Addis.

ACCOUNTABILITIES

• While leading all dimensions of the role, the Regional Director’s first and foremost task is to build and manage a strong performing team of Country Directors and senior staff in the region.
• Typical key end results to deliver together with the team in in the accountability areas are:
• People: A high performing and value-based team, engaged and motivated, able to deliver on the ambitions set, promoting gender equality and diversity, and demonstrating a progressive raising of the bar in their performance.
• Strategy: Ambitious and targeted Country Strategies, new or updated, in line with Plan’s global strategy and ambition, that guide Plan International’s programmes towards increased impact, strengthened legitimacy, sustainability and continued relevance within each country context.
• Change: The world and the West & Central Africa region are changing rapidly and the role of international NGOs, such as Plan, needs to evolve to ensure we remain relevant within each context and as a global organization. The regional director and his/her team will lead change within the region and contribute to the development of changes at the global level. A key pillar in this effort is the achieving broad based membership to support the locally-led, globally connected objectives.
• Quality: Ensuring our programmes become and remain state of the art and are in line with latest global standards, demonstrating outcomes and leading to thought leadership and policy influence based on evidence through evaluations and research.
• Risk: Ensure that all countries comply with internal and external standards in security, disaster preparedness, sponsorship and grants management, finance and administration, demonstrated in progressively positive audit performance in all auditable functions and compliance with external reporting requirements.
• Resource Mobilisation: Ensure a healthy funding base for Plan International’s programmes in the region through effective acquisition, allocation, and utilization of resources.
• Compliance: Ensure our operations are in compliance with Plan International’s global management and programme standards and with external regulatory and donor requirements.
• Networking: Represent Plan International and strengthen collaboration and partnerships at the right levels and ensure the organisation is present in relevant networks and forums.

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Job Description

• You will act as a strategy subject matter expert, working on strategic initiatives at global, regional and individual country levels.
• You will be responsible for strengthening the organisation’s ability to create aligned, consistent and coherent strategies that result in greater effectiveness and efficiency across the organisation and you will be responsible for helping the organisation to improve its ability to respond to opportunities and threats through timely adjustment to strategy based on horizon scanning insights, and strengthened Leadership Team decision making.

The Requirements

You bring;

• Significant experience within a blue-chip consulting firm, INGO strategy team or industry, including responsibility for leading substantial projects or engagements. A strong track record in consulting is highly desirable
• A proven track record in delivering a suite of strategy consulting services e.g. 
• Corporate and Growth strategy, to include activities such as baselining current business (incl. financial) performance, benchmarking a company’s performance to its peers and competitors, conducting trend analyses to assess current market landscape, identifying growth levers, visioning and prioritising to develop a set of strategic choices, and guiding organisations through business model reinvention. 
• Strategy implementation to successfully implement a strategy across a large complex organisation including the design and development of long-term strategic roadmaps, implementation planning, short term plans, critical success factors and development of best practice models to integrate strategy delivery. 
• Strategic Cost Reduction to include the undertaking of financial and organisational baselines, operational analysis to understand cost drivers, prioritising opportunities.
• Experience of running and motivating teams through challenging strategy projects, or relevant transferable experience; 
• Strong project/programme management and programme governance experience
• Facilitating, influencing and negotiation skills, and strong communication and stakeholder management skills
• Ability to understand, build relationships and engage tactfully across cultures

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The Opportunity

• You will work closely with senior leaders across Plan International to develop strategies and operating models that are aligned to the global strategy, context specific, coherent and consistent and helping them to understand trends and likely future changes in the external environment, particularly around our global footprint and the implementation of the global strategy.
• You will build and lead projects, undertaking analysis and developing insightful recommendations for senior management consideration, delivering presentations and facilitating discussions that succinctly and creatively communicate robust and evidence-based messages for complex projects.

About You

• With prior experience working on strategy in a consulting firm, INGO or comparable organisation you will have outstanding strategic and financial analysis and evaluation skills.
• Strong project management and programme governance experience are essential as is the ability to facilitate, influence and negotiate at senior levels.
• You are confident navigating ambiguity, proactive and driven, with a logical, structured approach.