Cisco

Strategy, Planning and Operations (SPO) Leader, Japan

What You Will Do?

The Strategy, Planning and Operations (SPO) Leader for the Japan Theater is a key leadership role with significant visibility and influence over the business. We are looking for a hands-on strategic thinker with a strong ability to execute to help transform and propel the JAPAN business to its next phase of growth. You will partner with the JAPAN Leadership Team and the broader functional teams to prioritize, plan, and operationalize key business strategies.

You will lead and develop a small team of Strategy and Operations professionals to identify and evaluate critical strategic priorities and accelerate action against these priorities through strategic and long-range business planning, performance management and operational excellence.

You will play a critical role to run and transforming the business, including:

• Orchestrating the development of Japan Theater’s strategic priorities to grow over market growth, increasing market share and drive sustainable growth.
• Owning and driving key Business Processes such as Strategy Plan, Long-range planning, Annual Business Plans, New Year Readiness, Quarterly Business Overviews, and other Business Cadences.
• Partnering with APJC and WW functions to ensure alignment between Cisco’s overall view and Japan such as - Strategic Direction, Enablement Programs and Best Practices.
• Leading the transformation of Japan Sales to SW/SaaS/Cloud
• Shaping the execution of CDA programs
• Managing the business with analytics, providing insights to identify growth opportunities to increase win-rate and market share, and turn around underperforming businesses
• Designing go-to-market to capture growth in the most effective and efficient way, innovating sales motions
• Incubating new initiatives until they are ready to scale
• Leading operational excellence in funnel Management, forecast accuracy and talent
• Drive field enablement for the Japan organization
• Partnering closely with Finance, People & Communities, and x-operations teams to ensure accountability and agility in execution

Who You Will Work With?

You will be a senior leader in the APJC Strategy Planning & Operations function, an amazing team of 100 professionals in the region, responsible for identifying growth opportunities, prioritizing investments/divestments, innovating go-to-market, realizing operational efficiencies, and bringing AI to modernize sales operations.

Who You Are?

You are a business leader with strong business acumen and a consultative mindset, well-rounded set of skills, high level of energy and curiosity, flexibility, can-do attitude, and a perpetual enthusiasm to partner with senior Cisco business leaders. You thrive in a fast-paced, team-based environment.

Your role is people, data, and communications intensive; it requires excellent leadership, critical thinking, independence, organizational, data analysis and communication skills, and managing by influence.

Specifically, we are looking for leaders who has the following characteristics and experiences:

• 10+ years in technology industry in a strategy & operations role or in a senior role in management consulting in the technology space.
• MBA from a top school is preferred
• Management Consulting experience from a top strategy consultancy is preferred
• Industry experience in technology, particularly in SaaS and Cloud, is preferred
• Strategic and innovative with an external awareness to adapt to market transitions and understand the nuances of selling complex solutions.
• Excellent leadership, management, strategic influencing, creative thinking, conflict resolution and team building skills.
• A teammate, developing and fostering meaningful relationships and strong collaboration skills, with amazing track record of leading and working with cross functional teams.
• Strong operational command of businesses, including metrics-based goals and achievement approach.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in Japanese and English; strong presentation skills and executive presence, with the ability to address and influence both executive and mid-level management.
• A self-starter, independent and a driver. Detail oriented, have a 'can-do' attitude, takes initiative and is highly organized. Acts with a sense of urgency.

Why Cisco?

At Cisco, each person brings their different talents to work as a team and make a difference.

Yes, our technology changes the way the world works, lives, plays and learns, but our edge comes from our people.

We connect everything – people, process, data and things – and we use those connections to change our world for the better.

We innovate everywhere - From launching a new era of networking that adapts, learns and protects, to building Cisco Services that accelerate businesses and business results. Our technology powers entertainment, retail, healthcare, education and more – from Smart-cities to your everyday devices.

We benefit everyone - We do all of this while striving for a culture that empowers every person to be the difference, at work and in our communities.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.