Associate Director Business Transformation at EY

The opportunity

Are you a growth accelerator? Are you passionate about helping some of the world’s largest and most successful companies achieve purposeful growth?

EY is helping our clients solve difficult problems and achieve their growth ambitions. We believe that our value doesn’t stop at strategy development; we help our clients implement our recommendations to transform the way they do business.

This is an opportunity to bring real meaning to your career by being involved in some of the most important transformative initiatives in our market. It is an opportunity to bring your strategic vision, your entrepreneurial and innovative spirit and your ability to reinvent business to our clients and contribute to building a better working world.

Our Strategy & Transformation team are seeking growth minded and solutions focused people who are passionate about truly making a difference. Based in South Africa, you will be working on high-profile engagements, with the brightest and best minds from across EY, finding innovative strategic solutions to some of the most complex and demanding problems.

You will be part of a high performing team committed to helping our biggest clients, and the teams who serve them, to define, design and deliver major transformation opportunities in their business. This team leads the way in conversations with the clients and the account teams who support them, leading EY’s approach to the market.

Associate Director in Strategy & Transformation

As an Associate Director in our Strategy & Transformation team you will work across Business Consulting to define and lead end to end transformation engagements.

Your primary focus will be to work with our leading clients and their executive teams to design and define innovative business models to respond to disruption, design the journey to transition from the current to the future business and establish transformation programs that drive growth and deliver long term value. You will collaborate with partners across the firm and across geographies to ensure a holistic and cross-functional, transformative approach.

You will lead business development, drive discussions with clients and deliver market leading ideas and proposals to clients. You will design the approach to delivering the engagement, assemble teams to deliver and guide the overall delivery of value to clients. You will have a strong sector focus in either Financial Services or Consumer (Retail, Consumer Product Manufacturing, Automotive, Telecommunications)

You will manage multiple high performing teams and lead the development of careers of colleagues. You will provide coaching and mentorship to team members, contribute to nurturing our culture and be a leader in living our values.

Your Key Responsibilities

• Pursue the most strategic transformational opportunities with our leading clients, with a strong sector focus and specialisation.
• Lead the sales process through executive conversations with clients.
• Building on the strategy of the client organisation, define the transformation vision, journey and delivery model for implementing transformation solutions.
• Understand all our transformative solutions across Consulting as you need to ensure all these solutions are brought to clients during the sales process and are all considered as part of solving transformative challenges holistically. This covers key topics, for example Strategy and Transformation, Sustainability and Decarbonisation, Supply Chain Transformation, Technology Transformation, Finance Transformation, Integrated Risk Management, Tax, Organisation and People.
• Design, reinvent and innovate business models that will create long term value and disrupt markets.
• Strongly conversant in our Transformation Delivery approach and Decarbonisation thought leadership.
• Facilitate design thinking workshops to define transformation solutions and potential roadmaps for implementation.
• Crystallise and document the thinking of the wider EY and client teams so that ideas and approaches can be crisply and clearly communicated.
• Build client relationships and establish the team as a trusted advisor in the market place.
• Convene diverse teams so their time is used productively and creates high value outputs.
• Collaborate across EY teams and solutions to increase value for our clients, contributing to building a better working world.

Skills And Attributes For Success

• A passion for people — our people are our greatest asset. We need you to be able to lead project teams to bring out the best in our people and help them to develop and grow.
• Ability to build exceptional client relationships — our clients are at the centre of what we do. Through the delivery of engagements, you will be responsible for developing key client relationships to make sure that we deliver quality and value.
• Ability to think strategically and to solve complex problems. You will demonstrate strong critical thinking skills focused on developing solutions, creating logical arguments or analysis, identifying or anticipating issues or challenges.
• Experience in leading transformation or innovation programs.
• Ability to communicate, making complex systems and situations simple to understand. You’ll communicate visually, verbally and in written reports.
• Ability to manage projects –we help our client solve their complex business challenges and then deliver the solution to have a positive impact.
• Ability to learn new ideas and capabilities rapidly through self–driven learning and research. You’ll need to be able to assimilate new ideas and information rapidly, making sense of the world around you and at clients.
• Experience in one or more of these sectors – Consumer Products, Retail, Telecommunications and Financial Services

Ideally, you’ll also have

• Leadership capabilities that accept responsibility, build high performing teams, scale through appropriate delegation and teamwork, share clear direction, gain support and commitment from others, provide feedback openly and learn from feedback from others whilst admitting mistakes in order to learn.
• Knowledge of leading innovation, transformation and strategy frameworks or methods with practical experience in having developed or implemented projects using these frameworks.
• Experience in strategy, innovation or transformation consulting.
• Proven track record of leading the sales process with clients successfully and the ability to collaborate effectively with others during the sales process.
• Strong commercial awareness and proven ability to present technical information in a meaningful manner to key stakeholders.
• Intellectual curiosity and passionate about solving complex problems. We are looking for people who are purpose driven and ask better questions to seek better answers.
• An entrepreneurial and growth-oriented mindset. What you know matters. We are looking for people who are innovative and can contribute to developing EY’s position and our team in the market.
• Enthusiasm and ability to collaborate well in teams. We are looking for inclusive people who value differences and have a real desire to both learn and coach others.