Head of Operational Improvement (CEO Office)
Posted 15 days 8 hours ago by Kupa Global
The organisation is a large-scale tropical forest restoration company operating in West Africa, focused on restoring degraded, biodiverse ecosystems through long-term, community-centred projects.
With operations across multiple countries, a workforce of 2,000+ employees, and thousands of hectares already restored, the organisation is scaling towards 100,000+ hectares under management in the next three years.
Projects are long-term and aligned with leading international standards (e.g. VERRA VCS, CCB), delivering measurable climate, biodiversity, and socioeconomic outcomes in partnership with global organisations and local communities.
The Role:Sitting in the co CEO Office, you will be the co CEO's right hand on operational execution - diagnosing gaps, designing systems, and embedding them across projects and functions. The role is not tied to a single function. You will move across priority areas (forest protection, restoration, livelihoods, ESG), going deep on one problem at a time and leaving behind scalable systems.
This is a hands on transformation role: diagnose design implement embed. Your mandate is to take us from project based execution to repeatable systems, bringing structure, accountability, and leadership visibility to fast scaling operations across geographies.
This is an individual contributor role with no direct reports - your influence comes from structured thinking, rigour, and trust, not headcount.
- Diagnostics: Rapidly assess operational performance, identify bottlenecks, and prioritise high impact interventions.
- System design: Build SOPs, workflows, and decision making processes that are practical, field ready, and scalable.
- Performance & accountability: Define KPIs, build reporting frameworks and dashboards, and establish clear ownership across teams.
- Implementation: Work directly with field teams to roll out systems and ensure adoption through training and iteration.
- Tooling: Evaluate and introduce tools that improve data collection, operational tracking, and decision making.
- co CEO support & stakeholder representation: Act as a proxy for the CEO on operational priorities and cross functional execution. Over time, the role is expected to involve managing high level meetings with senior stakeholders in West Africa - including government representatives, ministers, and strategic partners - alongside or on behalf of the co CEO. Final decisions remain with the co CEO.
- Consistent operating systems embedded across all major functions.
- Reliable KPIs and reporting across projects and geographies.
- Measurable improvements in operational efficiency and execution quality.
- A strong accountability culture, with less firefighting and ad hoc decision making.
- Real time performance visibility for leadership.
- Growing presence in senior external engagements, building toward independent representation of the CEO with government and strategic partners.
- 4-7 years in top tier operational consulting (Newton, Partners in Performance, AlixPartners, Alvarez & Marsal, Kearney, or equivalent) or high performance operational roles in complex, field based environments.
- Strong track record solving operational problems and implementing durable systems, KPIs, and performance frameworks.
- Exceptional structured thinking; able to move between strategy and execution seamlessly.
- Credible and composed in senior stakeholder environments - able to hold your own with executives, partners, and government counterparts.
- Equally effective with field teams and in the boardroom.
- Low ego, high ownership, strong bias for action, and resilient in ambiguous, fast changing settings.
- Willing to travel frequently and spend real time in the field.
- Motivated by long term environmental and social impact.
- Experience in emerging markets preferred.
- West Africa (Ghana / Sierra Leone) preferred; London considered. Frequent site travel required (strict minimum requirement of 15 weeks travel per year if London based).
- Competitive salary plus benefits.
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