Business Manager/Deputy Practice Leader - Governance Practice at World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Kenya

The Role:

To develop and lead the essential business management processes that will ensure the effective functioning of the Governance Practice. This will include leadership and co-ordination in the areas of knowledge management, innovation development, and communications and operations management. To support the Practice Leader in managing the implementation of the Practice strategy; including support in managing engagement with Practice members from across the network, Focal Points, the Leadership Team, the Network Executive Team (NET) and the WWF International Board as well as key external partners.

• Support the Practice Leader in the effective operational functioning of the Governance Practice in support of achieving WWF’s global goals outcomes.
• Create and lead the innovation process for the Practice to identify, surface, nurture, prototype new ideas from across the WWF network and take the best of these ideas to scale and global impact.
• Facilitate the innovation process to foster internal and external relationships that will enhance development of new innovations and their journey to scale and impact.
• Build a strong culture of collaboration within the Practice via close engagement with Focal points, the Leadership Team and other interested practice members to share current developments and feedback
• Work to change the behaviors and policies of key internal stakeholders if necessary and communicate the vision internally, to build commitment and action toward results.
• Provide general operations and business support to the Practice.
• Co-ordinate and drive clear and effective communication strategies aligned with Practice achievements for both internal and external communications.
• Lead the knowledge management process by organizing frequent and structured interaction between the Practice participants to ensure effective knowledge transfer, coordination and synergies in developing new ideas.
• Oversee and analyze the Practice’s knowledge pipeline and ensure awareness of main external topics and trends.
• Liaise closely with other Practices and Focal points to provide support and co-ordinate expertise across the Practices.
• Manage any potential operational issues or areas of communications, knowledge and innovation that may inhibit Practice delivery and feedback to the Practice Leader.

Main responsibilities:

• Support Practice strategy development, jointly with Practice core team.
• Work closely with the Practice Leader to agree communications priorities, and ensure that Practice outputs are consistently communicated and remain globally relevant.
• Co-ordinate and work with network communications leaders to ensure that the ‘voice’ of the Practice is heard both within the Network and externally.
• Liaise as required with out of scope divisions i.e Brand Management, Global Campaigns, Digital Media and Global Media, to ensure consistency of international messaging.
• Liaise with the Practice Focal points to communicate the Practice agenda.
• Work closely with the Practice Leader to foster a community spirit in which people learn, come together and share knowledge.
• Develop and lead regular virtual knowledge sharing sessions, deciding on content to cover the most important topics and trends for the practice (Virtual Trainings) incorporating speakers with a high level of expertise.
• Ensure the Knowledge Management platform is relevant and up to date to facilitate external know-how and provide ‘on-demand’ advice.
• Develop a process to promote innovation by linking, selecting, nurturing, and taking to scale the best ideas that show greatest promise of delivering transformative impact against our Goals and Outcomes.
• Manage this process through the phases of funding, potential evaluation, monitoring, reporting, network-wide sharing and scaling up.
• Support the Practice Leader with peer review, KPIs, transparent external and internal reporting on all critical contributions and progress.
• In coordination with other Practice Driver Business Managers, ensure a coherent and harmonized approach to cross cutting operational issues, ensure processes improvements and monitor them.
• Manage the Practice in the absence of the Practice Leader.

 Required Qualifications, Skills and Competencies:

• University degree in a related discipline subject. E.g. Communications, Information technology or Business/Economics, or relevant equivalent work experience;
• Proven experience in one or more areas of functional expertise in Communications, Innovation, and Knowledge Management and with understanding of environment and sustainable development matters particularly in aspects of Governance.
• Extensive knowledge of WWF network and priorities.
• Fluent command of written and spoken English language and any other language/s an asset.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills; ability to engage and connect with broad range of people, and work as part of a multi-disciplinary team that cuts across the WWF Network.
• Evidence of ability to manage a multitude of responsibilities and pressure, and swiftly react as and when necessary.
• Ability to analyze situations with accuracy and attention to detail.
• Diplomacy skills and tenacity to achieve tangible results.
• Able to navigate complex issues and organizational complexity and execute high quality work in a timely way.
• Organized and process driven approach.
• Positive influence to galvanize the Network stakeholder around a shared agenda
• Decision making skills with strong business acumen and drive for results.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills;
• Adheres to WWF’s values, which are: Knowledgeable, Optimistic, Determined and Engaging.