Customer Insight, Japan Manager (#1475)

•  The Customer Insight, Japan Regional Manager role is a key catalyst for the success in Japan moving forward through working with leaders across the business in Japan to identify opportunities to leverage insight to drive more effective, customer centric business decision making.
• Reporting to the Japan Regional Head of Customer Insight, this is an opportunity for an independent, motivated insight professional to use his/her own expertise, and leverage expertise from around the globe, to take a leadership role in developing and implementing insight driven innovation & decision making in Japan’s largest foreign insurance group.
• As a career path, next steps beyond Japan Regional Manager could include Head of Insight for one of Japan’s operating companies, Regional Head of Customer Insight, or alternative roles within the Japan Regional Marketing team.
• Act as an evangelist for insight / market research, actively engaging with key stakeholders within both the Japan Regional team and within key operating companies in Japan to support the creation of an insight-centric culture where team members across all functionalities actively seek to introduce insight into business innovation & other decision making.    
•  Lead multiple strategic research projects in areas of new product & service development, campaign development & optimization, segmentation, and customer experience.
• Leverage your business expertise and consultation skills to identify the appropriate opportunities, performance gaps and root causes to drive new decisions & business actions that positively impact business results.
• Develop and deliver presentations with clear messages and a compelling storyline that engage stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
• Develop and deepen positive, win-win, relationships with internal clients at all levels and from many nationalities. The skilled use of communication and negotiation skills is a critical requirement.
• Collaborate in the creation of best practice research systems / approaches and the development of insight assets where key insight can be actively shared across projects to enabled accelerated innovation on a foundation of key learnings regarding Japanese consumers’ relationship with risk & rewards, insurance and technology.  
• Support the creation & identification of independent consumer, industry, and technology insights and business relevant recommendations for leadership from a variety of data sources.
• Selection, engagement & management of leading research / insight / innovation partners.

Direct Accountabilities

• Responsive engagement with marketing and business leadership to develop proposals for the appropriate use of existing & new insights aligned to the development stage, budget and timeline for key business initiatives.    
• Skilled design, management & delivery of research including hypothesis generation, creation of questionnaires, FW oversight & project management, qualitative & quantitative analysis and insight delivery with and without external partners
• Collaboration in the development of ‘self-service’ insight assets that can be used on demand by the business to support more effective innovation without conducting additional research
• Scan, review and integrate relevant thought leadership from industry news, analyst research and research reports.
• Effective collaboration as part of a “swat team” of highly capable, marketing professionals within the regional marketing team, and across the global marketing community within.

• Strategic/Systems Thinking: Understands the connections and relationships across functions and entities for both internal and external constituencies; thinks innovatively into the future. Has a entrepreneurial spirit for innovation. 
• Service Orientation:  Focuses and aligns actions and decisions on ways to enhance services and offerings    
• Communication:  Sends the right messages and information to appropriate Innovation audiences verbally and in writing; keeps people informed; adapts communication style to the needs of the audience    
• Personal Development:  Is open to and seeks new learning opportunities; embraces and responds to feedback from others    
• Collaboration/Influence:  Actively gathers Innovation level of participation and input to decision-making, and fosters same within team. Persuades others to see/recognize new perspectives to reach best outcomes by utilizing buy-in, persuasion and relationship building
• Team Focus:  Assembles and effectively leads direct report and/or partnership teams. Exceptional facilitator of team work & decision-making in virtual and in-person settings •    Partnership: Strategically partners across areas, entities, and functions to achieve long-term performance goals and re-allocates resources as needed.  Works to achieve “win-win” solutions to achieve outcomes.  Holds others accountable for developing and maintaining partnerships
• Results Orientation:  Does what is necessary to improve performance; balances the resources necessary to produce desired outcomes; tracks and monitors performance.    
• Confidence/Innovative:  Has foresight and asserts a willingness to perform in challenging situations; learns from mistakes and from feedback from others
• Cultural Competence:  Considers and uses cultural dimensions in workforce planning and development, and the formulation and enacting of business strategies

Critical Orientations

• Get the Job Done.  Execute all functions and achieve all objective specific to your areas of responsibilities or unit.
• Provide Superior Customer Service to our business partners.  Drive a responsive, “Start from Yes” culture that results in well-managed customer expectations.    
• Proactive Collaboration.  Contribute to the success of our team.  Balance of leadership, “followship”, and influence.    
• Contribute/demonstrate expanding influence with the Greater Enterprise.

Miscellaneous Characteristics    

• Ability to perform effectively in a fast-paced, continuously changing environment  
• Ability to drive disparate groups of individuals towards consensus    
• Highly organized, active in meeting or exceeding deadlines, skilled at managing multiple complex situations and the ability to manage a diversified workload    
• Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively with Senior Leadership - executive presence •    Excellent verbal, written, visual, and communication skills    
• Self starter capable of working in a fast paced environment with minimal direction    
• Must be able to offer quick solutions/troubleshooting to IT and business issues – Problem Solver