VP, CBS and Strategy

About Culligan QuenchCulligan Quench’s purpose is to impact people’s lives and improve the earth by helping to eliminate the 500 million plastic bottles consumed each year.  We play a front-line role in the battle against single-use plastic water bottles by delivering on-demand filtered water solutions to more than 120,000 healthy and environmentally conscious customers across North America. Our bottle-free water coolers, ice machines, sparkling water dispensers and coffee brewers purify the existing water supply, providing an endless supply of clean water and water-based beverages for a fixed monthly fee, typically under a long term bundled service and rental subscription agreement.  Culligan Quench has grown from a small regional company to an international leader that had a successful NYSE public offering in 2016 and is now a strategic company owned by private equity backed Culligan.  Headquartered in King of Prussia, PA, Quench has more than 1,600 team members operating out of more than 90 locations across North America and Puerto Rico. For more information visit https://quench.culligan.com/
About CulliganFounded by Emmett Culligan in 1936, Culligan is a world leader in delivering superior water solutions that will make a real difference in improving the health and wellness of consumers. The company offers some of the most technologically advanced, state-of-the-art water filtration and treatment products. These products include water softeners, drinking water systems, whole-house systems and solution for businesses. Culligan's network of franchise dealers is the largest in the world, with over 900 dealers in 90 countries. Many of Culligan dealers have valuable equity in their local communities as multigenerational family owners of their franchises. For more information visit www.culligan.com. 
Values: 5CsCulligan as OneCustomers come firstCommitment to InnovationCourage to do what's rightConsistently deliver exceptional results

The Position

• The VP of Culligan Business System (CBS) and Strategy at Culligan Quench is a pivotal role requiring strategic foresight and program leadership. The role is designed for a leader who excels at leading the development of strategic plans, managing multiple strategic priorities, leading the integration of acquisitions, and driving the execution of strategic initiatives through a structured management system and cadence.  The right candidate will work with the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and broader Senior Leadership Team (SLT) to challenge thinking and identify initiatives with “breakthrough” potential.  The candidate will also ensure alignment across functions and business units, monitor progress against targets, and drive results, using the company’s Strategic Deployment Process (SDP).
• This role requires a hands-on approach to work with the leaders across the organization to identify and prioritize opportunities, build business cases, identify resources needs, define projects, establish success metrics and goals, and enable their execution and success.
• A successful leader in this role will be highly collaborative and able to work cross-functionally, with a deep understanding of change management and the use of countermeasures to help initiatives recover from setbacks.  The leader will also have deep experience in driving continuous improvement (CI) initiatives and  the ability to work effectively with  CI teams across the organization to ensure effective execution and value delivery of both our SDP and other continuous improvement efforts in the business. This dynamic position demands a leader who is not only strategic but also pragmatic, helping the organization to drive results and achieve operational excellence. 

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategic Planning:

• a. Partner with and challenge the ELT to develop the vision for the organization and support the development and updating annual refinement of our Long Range Plan (LRP). 
• b. Lead the annual development and execution of the company’s SDP, working with the team to define the 3-5 major initiatives to drive, ensuring alignment with business objectives and strategic goals, and support the operationalization of the SDP initiatives.
• c. Develop a deep understanding of the business, markets,  channel complexities, and customer insights
• 2. Business System Leadership and Management:
• a. Lead the SDP process, which includes the development of business cases, project plans, success factors and metrics, facilitation of governance meetings, KPI and countermeasure tracking, and executive reporting, driving consistency in the way we manage strategic initiatives across the organization.
• b. Ensure the SDP process is deeply embedded across the organization, becoming the core mechanism to run the business.
• c. Identify capability gaps that create risks to executing initiatives and highlight these gaps and proposed solutions. Ensure capabilities, systems and processes are appropriately scaled to support the BU growth
• d. Identify and lead change management initiatives associated with cross functional strategic shifts, partnering with executive team and other functional resources as necessary.
• 3. New Operational Opportunity identification and business continuous improvement
• a. Work cross functionally with the ELT and SLT to help assess new functional and cross functional business/process opportunities, helping to define value cases, solutions, and efforts to enable them to support decision making and prioritization.
• b. Lead functional support to help ELT members develop pipelines of opportunities, prioritize, plan, and execute key functional and cross functional initiatives ensuring alignment and buy-in on targets, cross functional collaboration and communication, and the execution of launches as needed.
• c. Identify and drive continuous improvement efforts to raise the performance bar across processes to bring them at the next level and make sustainable in the long-term, including driving root-cause analysis and countermeasure process, and coaching the broader CI organization at Culligan Quench to do the same
• d. Act as lead for priority initiatives where needed. Oversee the day to day management of the project which includes plan development, plan tracking, business case development, risk management and reporting.
• e. Identify and deploy best practices within the organization, leveraging Culligan CoEs and standardize ways of working as appropriate
• f. Lead the detailed integration planning and business case development of large scale integrations, as applicable. Facilitate the process and act as ‘central IMO’ lead for the project. 

Requirements

Must have:

• Proven track record of leading and facilitating strategic planning processes.
• Deep experience and success in identifying and driving transformational initiatives that have had impact on both the top and bottom lines
• Demonstrated success in managing complex product solutions including solid planning, priority setting, and project management skills with experience managing multiple projects and stakeholders in a dynamic business environment.
• Strong analytical skills and a value-oriented mindset to effectively manage strategic planning and development of value cases and execution plans.
• Demonstrated ability to formulate and articulate comprehensive business cases for new opportunities and operational improvements to help assess trade-offs and prioritization.
• Demonstrated experience and leadership in M&A integration.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with a proven track record of supporting decision making through analysis, business case development, and trade-off analysis.

Must be:

• Highly motivated and innovative, with a resilient and energetic approach to reaching solutions and achieving business goals.
• A strong collaborator, comfortable working across diverse teams and capable of fostering multi-functional thinking.
• An effective communicator, adept at developing relationships across various operational, technical, sales, and marketing teams.
• Skilled in analyzing data, interpreting results, and leveraging findings to identify opportunities and drive decisions.
• Comfortable with shared accountability for project outcomes, demonstrating integrity, honesty, and a commitment to learning from mistakes.
• A pragmatic problem solver with a track record of identifying and executing new solutions for complex business challenges.
• Effective at time management, prioritizing tasks based on strategic value to drive the best outcomes for the business.

Preferred experience:

• Minimum of 15 years of business experience in progressive roles
• Background in strategy consulting, PE or investment banking preferred
• Proven track record in developing and executing strategic initiatives to drive business growth
• Experience in managing complex projects with multiple stakeholders
• BA/BS degree. Advanced degree and/or MBA desirable.

Equal Opportunity EmployerThis employer is required to notify all applicants of their rights pursuant to federal employment laws. For further information, please review the Know Your Rights notice from the Department of Labor.