The Profile
The Managing Director (MD) is the primary leader in this location.

Key Responsibilities include:
• Demonstrating on a daily basis ‘what good looks like’.
• He/she will be the chief local custodian of the company culture and the company's Way of Working.
• Managing and owning the P&L, the MD is expected to openly embrace challenges with a problemsolving mindset and to unlock the full potential of the organization by relentlessly developing its people.
• The MD is expected to be a LEAN leader that continuously strives to make the company the best in class operator through standardization and sharing of best practice globally in an inclusive, transparent manner.
• Furthermore, the MD is the chief stakeholder manager of the entity, ensuring productive and positive relations with all relevant stakeholders such as customers, governmental agents, regulatory authorities and labor unions, with a visible presence on the ground with both employees and customers and a high degree of intimacy.
• Finally, the MD is the primary enabler of global company standards within a local context and acts as the entity’s chief safety owner, leader and ambassador.

Behaviors and attributes:
• Health, safety, security & environment – Understands and actively embeds HSE as a value, by taking collective and individual responsibility for driving HSSE improvement. Has integrated HSSE into business making processes and programs and understands their impact and influence on risk management. Demonstrates accountability by engaging and supporting the workforce to learn from incidents and remains fully and emotionally involved and engaged in HSE every day.
• Drives vision & purpose – Demonstrates a deep-seated and consistent perseverance to deliver on the overarching vision and goals of our company. Shows strong belief in and sense of ownership of that vision. Thinks and acts at an enterprise level and infuses day-to-day leadership and communication with same. Actively drives engagement across all layers of the organization by instilling a fundamental sense of purpose, starting with the question of ‘why’ we do what we do as a business.
• Drives business performance – Relentlessly and continuously ensures that the business strives for excellence, by ensuring that customers receive excellent service and all employees embrace excellence in all of their activities and deliverables. Shows ongoing drive for efficiencies and improvements in all parts of the business, by consistently linking ‘Way of Working’ to solve/deliver business priorities and objectives, as well as leveraging all elements and tools of the ‘Way of Working’ to drive a business system that is indistinguishable from ‘normal’ functional activities. Always acts responsibly and with full accountability towards shareholders in terms performance and return on invested capital.
• Customer orientation – Exhibits a ‘customer first’ attitude in all decisions and considerations, with the ultimate aim of whatever we do must be good for our customers. Strives to deeply understand expectations and requirements of both internal and external customers, and weaves this into daily operations and initiatives.
• Critical thinking – Displays a sense of ongoing curiosity about the world, both inside and outside the company, with the expectation to ‘learn and share something new’ every day. Questions established patters of operation and shows a continuous ‘drive for improvement’ and goes to Gemba by default. Evaluates multiple approaches to a problem by applying structured problemsolving skills and drives a consistent problem-solving culture through Kaizen methodology.
• Collaboration – Drives a collaborative approach across all levels and functions of the organization and builds effective teams. Actively builds bridges and counters silo thinking and demonstrates how to make a matrix organization work well. Advocates a culture of reaching out across teams and departments to ask for best practice to find solutions.
• Instills trust – Demonstrates ongoing integrity in words and actions, as well as deep selfawareness. Stays true to fundamental values and philosophy of our company. In spite of strategic adjustments, never compromises strategic and corporate principles, values and ethics.
• Situational adaptability – Demonstrates a mindset of flexibility and agility, while not losing sight of the overall goal and underlying purpose. Has the ability to anticipate and overcome setbacks and unexpected new developments, and to persevere with regards to longer term objectives.
• People orientation – Actively develops talent and values differences in people. Displays a ‘coaching mindset’ in all conversations with subordinates. Focuses on asking the right questions to trigger deeper thinking and learning. Fosters a culture of proposing solutions to problems out of own initiative and reflection, and continuously gives and solicits timely constructive feedback in a structured manner. Holds leaders in his organization accountable to the same leadership philosophy.
• Influencing – Shows ability to find common ground and purpose with different parties and actors and distilling meaning for every participant. Actively drives necessary change and secures buy-in
from all relevant stakeholders, with and without immediate authority. Exhibits an attitude of humility and curiosity toward other people’s opinions, beliefs and experiences. Consults widely and does not pretend to have all the answers. Practices active listening skills and expects the same from leaders in his/her organization.
• Inspiring – Displays an ability to make sense of the world through storytelling and demonstrates ‘wholehearted leadership’ that includes publicly sharing personal failures and tribulations, and how those have been overcome. Ensures that all layers of the organization are continuously reminded about the overarching purpose and links all initiatives and engagements back to the same purpose. Exhibits the ability to communicate clearly and concisely, and to effectively tailor the message depending on the audience. Practices active two-way communication in all forums and situations.
• Cultivates Innovation – Shows an attitude of openness and curiosity to new technology and its benefits. Displays ‘early adopter’ attributes and proactively stays up-to-date on technology developments. Leverages the opportunities in automation and digitization to continuously improve processes and efficiencies.
• External focus – Demonstrates a ‘from the outside in’ mentality and outlook on business. Proactively keeps up-to date on current political, social and economic events and developments and reflects upon implications for the business. Preempts the impact of external developments by timely strategic/tactical adjustments.

Relevant experiences:
• Performance management – Has a thorough grounding in operational performance management and corporate governance, by virtue of having had full leadership responsibility for an organizational unit.
• Commercial – Ideally has had exposure to a functional commercial role (CCO, Head of Sales etc.) or played a leading role in a strategic commercial project. Has held/led customer-facing positions and/or projects in the past.
• Working in a matrix – Worked in a matrix organization, having both ‘solid’ and ‘dotted’ reporting lines. Has successfully managed projects and strategic initiatives across different functions, brands, business units and/or geographies.
• Stakeholder management – Experience in managing a diverse and potentially adverse set of stakeholders, such as port authorities, regulatory authorities, governmental agents, unions, international organizations etc.
• Relevant industry experience – Prior exposure and/or in port management/operations, shipping, transportation, freight forwarding and/or logistics.
• Non-industry experience – Has some work experience from and/or exposure to outside the industry, such as FMCG, oil & gas, regulatory authorities etc.
• Working across cultures – Has had significant work experience outside home country and/or immediate cultural context.
• Leadership experience – Has significant successful leadership experience, including both ‘leading individual contributors’ and ‘leading other leaders’. Project management experience is an added asset.
• People development experience – Has successfully developed own successor in one of previous roles.
• Strategy development and execution – Has taken lead in successful development and execution of a long-term strategic initiative.
• Working in complex ownership structures – Leadership experience in an entity with complex ownership structured such as joint ventures, public-private partnerships etc., and has successfully navigated the stakeholder landscape.

Functional skills and requirements:
• Lean – Should have a grounding in tools of Lean academy level 1 (minimum) or 3.3 (ideal). Has the ability to leverage basic problem-solving tools and facilitate discussions to generate improvements and solution (D.I.V.E.). Has thorough grounding in and end-to-end understanding of Operating Systems.
• Operations management – Knowledge of and experience in managing of port- and container related processes and has led significant improvement initiatives in same.
• Negotiation – Should possess solid negotiation skills, and a track record of successfully concluding negotiations and resolving conflicts with high stakes. Displays proactive conflict resolution skills.
• Compliance – Awareness of ongoing business and operational risks. Has played an instrumental role in identifying and addressing past compliance issues, and has actively driven risk management strategies and processes, as well as non-compliance investigations.
• Financial understanding – Has a thorough grounding in fundamentals of business finance (financial data, financial statements, cash management, banking, planning, budgets, profitability, solvency, liquidity etc.).
• Strategic planning – Has led strategy development and execution initiatives in the past.
• Commercial planning – Prior exposure to launching a new product into the marketplace and/or has played leading role in developing plans to ensure operations are in place to handle distribution and feedback from customers.
• Media – Previous successful interaction with various forms of media (TV, print, social media etc.) and has built a solid skill set in terms of adequately and concisely communicating with media representatives, without compromising business interests.
• Change leadership – Is familiar with common change leadership frameworks (Kotter etc.) and has successfully led strategic change initiatives in the past through all critical stages.
• Mentoring and coaching – Has acted as a mentor to junior employees in the past and is an experienced practitioner of established coaching models (especially GROW, High Performing Teams etc.

Are you interested in becoming a Managing Director in Liberia? Apply now at the top or bottom of our page.