Business Manager

We are seeking a strategic, business-minded candidate to join our GPS ANZ team as a Business Manager. The successful candidate will have a sales background and a strong understanding of change management. They will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the business for a function or team and will drive planning, designing, and delivering initiatives that support the function or team in meeting its business and people objectives.
The Business Manager will have strong relationships across ANZ and Asia and will be able to foster a culture of innovation and high performance.
They will need to have knowledge of sales excellence and sales strategy and will be responsible for ensuring the effectiveness of the Leadership Team’s operating rhythm, including setting up and driving key processes to get work done.
The ideal candidate will have a bias for action and delivery, and the ability to motivate, inspire and lead people around them. They must be confident in working with the ANZ Leadership team as well as a multitude of other leaders across the ANZ Partner Ecosystem. If you are a strategic thinker with a passion for driving business success, we encourage you to apply for this exciting opportunity in the GPS ANZ team.
Responsibilities:
Specialty Responsibilities:
Leads executive-level communication with a variety of internal audiences. Optimizes the leader's time by structuring the communication strategy for the business and organizing the daily communications of the leader; performs triage and ghostwriting on behalf of the leader to expedite leader's time responding to emails. Develops presentations and messaging to articulate the team's mission, key projects, organizational/company strategy, and vision on behalf of the leader. May perform executive-level communication with a variety of audiences. Ensures alignment with business priorities. Proactively seeks out relevant content to communicate to the organization. Guides tactical response to crisis situations.*
· Designs and oversees the creation of foundational and storytelling content within the organization and in the industry. Uses understanding of audience needs to ensure the optimal use of leaders' time. Synthesizes findings within workstream and identifies links to broader strategic efforts and external facing thought leadership. Provides direction for criteria used to break down complex information into actionable steps for audience; organizes executive visits, including global events with customers. Represents the leader when with
customers. Carries out related reporting and exception management as required.*
· Drives accountability for the team and organization in executing core business activities. Reviews performance, commitments, execution, and leverages stakeholders to achieve results. Serves as a point of contact while understanding the business status and industry trends. Oversees corporate governance and performance management by providing insight and guidance into prioritizing performance metrics, defining and monitoring forward-looking key performance indicators (KPIs), communicating to senior leadership on progress, and evangelizing processes from the top levels of the company. Demonstrates achieved implementation and high-impact business value (e.g., executive-level recognition) for partners and the company. Creates clarity in ambiguous situations to facilitate and drive prioritization and decision making for leaders across the organization.*
People Management:
· Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
· Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
· Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
· Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.
Business Operations:
· Drives the architecture, development, and execution of the rhythm of business. Drives strategy initiatives and helps facilitate for rhythm of business (ROB); uses strategy plans to inform structure and business insights to predict business outcomes. Works with senior leaders to drive outcomes. Collaborates with partners to develop plans and articulate potential benefits of partnerships and how they provide mutual value. Drives business review cadence. Informs direction for processes related to adherence to privacy and compliance. Leads plans to ensure continuation of business at all times, including in adverse conditions in accordance with corporate guidance.
· Executes business plans to ensure continuation of business at all times, including in adverse conditions, in accordance with corporate governance. Ensures checks and balances are in place for the team to ensure Microsoft's best interest with regard to strategic partnerships necessary for continuity of business. Strategizes and develops business continuity plans with Microsoft corporate Crisis Management and Business Continuity teams.
· Leads strategy execution in partnership with the leadership team across the organization. Leverages knowledge of the business to drive the leader's and business's goals. Leads and oversees processes to ensure alignment across groups. Sets best practices for company strategy by leveraging consolidated information within existing businesses, and advocates and presents business cases to senior leadership. Contributes to organizational design conversation and drives successful implementation of organizational plans and strategies (e.g., translates high-level strategic plans into concrete execution). Shares priorities with leaders to negotiate appropriate level of team's involvement on initiatives so as to help team drive execution of top priorities. Establishes key performance indicators (KPIs) in alignment with strategy to help streamline business strategy. Works with the organization to establish and report against targets, and adjusts targets if necessary.
· Leverages deep knowledge of organizational strategy and planned deliverables for the upcoming year(s) to design budgets. Develops forecasting plans in partnership with the leadership team. Works in partnership with Finance to approve the budgets. Oversees the development of metrics for budgeting and forecasting; identifies actions that can be taken to course-correct and drive performance improvement; anticipates business challenges based on forecasts and develops plans accordingly; contributes knowledge to strategic investment decisions. Works with procurement team to coordinate future resources. Ensures that the leader is aligned on the headcount strategy and participates in or leads the organizational design for headcount allocation
Maximizing/ Extending the Leader:
· Leads in conjunction with stakeholders and the leadership team on multiple workstreams (e.g., workforce planning, culture, business health). Leverages key partnerships to drive the agenda for the leadership team and ensures follow up. Builds and cultivates relationships with senior leaders and executives. Advises senior leaders and key external stakeholders on industry and company insights as a key partner. Acts as a proxy for the leader. Creates alignment within partnerships by providing an objective point of view, ensuring all voices are heard, synthesizing ideas, and creating an action plan.
· Leverages knowledge of the leader's goals and business approach to ensure business activities are aligned with the leader's objectives. Serves in the absence of the leader as needed to share their goals, objectives, and vision. Supports the leader and serves as a thought leader in multiple areas (e.g., setting key goals, priorities, and definitions; team culture and health; communications; budget/finance; industry/specific business knowledge). Synthesizes information into insights that inform business decisions, leveraging expertise to influence
leader, leadership team, and across the organization. Helps develop and lands organizational changes (e.g., employee data management, skilling plans, landing quota).
Organizational Health:
· Drives team culture and health for the leader by getting a pulse on organizational health, as well as leading culture initatives (e.g., Diversity and Inclusion [D&I], hiring, onboarding) while partnering with Human Resources to do so. Capitalizes on team strengths and identifies development areas, strategizing, planning, and executing trainings. In partnership with Human Resources, tracks Microsoft Poll responses and coordinates a response. Tracks the use of role-based compliance trainings and new trainings; drives the training completion rates. Ensures a healthy compliance scorecard for the organization.
Special Projects/Programs and Initiatives:
· Drives cross-team projects as needed to meet the changing business environment and to manage complex business needs. Leads project/program management to ensure organization-wide implementation of strategic efforts that require hands-on coordination across multiple disciplines and business organizations. Leads strategic innovation and experimentation. Creates clarity on ambiguous projects and develops plan for execution.
Qualifications:
Required/Minimum Qualifications
· Bachelor's Degree in relevant field (e.g., Liberal Arts, Business Administration, Management, Computer Science) AND 8+ years experience in financial management, business planning, operations management, strategy, project management, human resources, or business-related roles
o OR equivalent experience.
Additional or Preferred Qualifications
· Bachelor's Degree in relevant field (e.g., Liberal Arts, Business Administration, Management, Computer Science) AND 10+ years experience in financial management, business planning, operations management, strategy, project management, human resources, or business-related roles
o OR Master's Degree in relevant field (e.g., Liberal Arts, Business Administration, Management, Computer Science) AND 7+ years experience in financial management, business planning, operations management, strategy, project management, human resources, or business-related roles
o OR equivalent experience.
· 5 + years people management experience.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the .