James Hardie Building Products Inc. is the North American leader in fiber cement home siding and exterior design solutions. Hardie® products offer long lasting beauty and endless design possibilities with trusted protection and low maintenance. The company pioneered modern fiber cement building products and continues to invest in innovation to transform the industry. James Hardie is a high-performance organization, with an unwavering commitment to Zero Harm. The company proudly employs a diverse workforce of over 3,000 employees across operations in North America.

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The Assoc. Manager Strategic Initiative  work on strategic commercial business initiatives that represent a scaled improvement to current state, require sizeable financial investment and or cross over multiple segments. Your work will directly support James Hardie’s overarching business strategy.  This role will report to the Senior Manager of Strategic Initiatives for the North American Pro Channel. This position does not have direct reports and is based in Chicago at the James Hardie corporate office; 303 E. Wacker Drive Chicago IL. Travel is expected to be ~10% - 15%.

What You’ll Do:

Initiative Support & Management 

• In this dynamic role you will work collaboratively with peers from each respective Pro Channel Segment Team (Installer, Builder, Contractor, and Multi-Family), in addition to members of  Marketing, Product management, Sales, Finance, Project Management, R&D and Commercial Operations. This will afford you significant cross-functional leadership opportunities and broad visibility to varying levels of James Hardie’s commercial organization.  

Data Analysis and Market Planning

• Partner with groups such as Product Management and the Pro Channel Segment Teams in the development of market plans and analysis that supports core initiatives and product strategies.  You will accomplish this through analysis of industry data, internal data and organization knowledge.

Opportunity Identification and Business Case Development

• As a member of the Strategic Initiatives team you will be given the opportunity to leverage and grow your skillset by working on many of the most challenging commercial problems James Hardie faces, developing thoughtful solutions to these problems, and driving project execution. Vital to this process is the identification of opportunities, ideation of potential solutions and the completion of business cases to justify investment. You will have a direct impact on the creation of business cases that are tied to millions of dollars in investment, and reviewed by Vice President to C-Suite leadership within James Hardie.
• Collaborate on strategy development and add hoc workflows with direct team or segment teams as needed.
• Lead the creation of metrics and dashboards to monitor initiative performance and progress against goals.
• Expertly leverage the a gate process to advance workflows.

The position responsibilities outlined above are in no way to be construed as all encompassing.  Other duties, responsibilities, and qualifications may be required and/or assigned as necessary.

What You’ll Bring:  

• Well rounded business acumen.
• Ability to lead through influence, persuasion, and argument.
• Ability to think strategically.
• Can proactively manage multiple projects in a fast paced change oriented environment,
• Adept at collating diverse pieces of information to frame and structure an unstructured problem and build a compelling business case to address it.
• Exceptional interpersonal written and oral communication skills.
• Thrives in a cross-functional environment. Passion for soliciting and incorporating the input of varying stakeholders at different levels of the organization.
• Can proactively identifying problems or project risks, determine the root cause, and build corrective action plans.
• Skilled at collecting insights from external stakeholders and incorporating those insights to deliver a superior workproduct.
• Highly detailed oriented with the ability to see and direct the “big picture.”
• Demonstrated advanced skills with the standard features of various personal computer word processing and spreadsheet software (Microsoft Word and Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Internet, and proprietary software)

Education/Experience:

Required:

• Bachelor’s Degree required, (MBA preferred)
• 8+ years of experience in sales, marketing, channel, product, segment, business development or brand management.
• Demonstrated ability to manage a project from initial discovery / opportunity identification to completion.
• Business to business and business to consumer business development experience (preferred).
• Experience with Stage Gate, Tollgate or similar process (preferred).

James Hardie Building Products Inc. is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, gender, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, genetic information, veteran's status, marital status, pregnancy, disability, or any other basis protected by law.