Managing Director

The Opportunity

As a key member of SmartStart’s C-Suite, the Managing Director will be the owner of enterprise execution, integration and organisational performance - translating approved strategy into clear priorities, integrated plans, accountabilities, operating rhythms and measurable outcomes.

The role will make the enterprise system work: aligning functions, resolving cross-functional dependencies and trade-offs, strengthening performance discipline and ensuring that evidence, people, resources, technology, programme, network and ecosystem capabilities come together to execute strategy.

As SmartStart shifts from primarily implementing and scaling programmes itself toward enabling a wider network and ecosystem to deliver quality ECD at scale, the Managing Director will ensure that this shift becomes operationally real while protecting delivery, quality, learning and legitimacy.

For an accomplished enterprise leader, this is an opportunity to lead through leaders, shape a more integrated and adaptive operating model, and help SmartStart convert bold strategic ambition into sustained organisational and ecosystem outcomes.

Managing Director - Job Specification

Purpose

To serve as SmartStart’s C-Suite owner of enterprise execution, integration and organisational performance. The Managing Director turns CEO/Board-approved strategy into coherent, sustained delivery across the organisation, ensuring SmartStart operates as one enterprise rather than a collection of strong but disconnected functions. The role creates clarity, integration, accountability and execution without becoming a second CEO or taking specialist decisions away from functional leaders.

What You Will Help Us Achieve

As part of SmartStart’s C-Suite, you will:

• Translate strategy into execution - converting approved strategic direction into focused enterprise priorities, integrated plans, measurable outcomes and clear accountabilities.
• Build a reliable performance system - making delivery visible, surfacing risks early and ensuring evidence drives timely corrective action and organisational learning.
• Integrate the enterprise - resolving cross-functional dependencies, ownership gaps and competing priorities so functions collectively deliver SmartStart’s strategy.
• Evolve the operating model for scale - translating the shift from implementer to enabler and field catalyst into concrete changes in structures, capabilities, governance and ways of working.
• delivery while building the future - aligning programme, network, platform, evidence and ecosystem commitments while maintaining quality and safeguarding.
• Direct resources toward strategic value - integrating people, money, technology and organisational capacity around explicit priorities, trade-offs and opportunity cost.
• Lead through leaders - creating a high-accountability, high-trust leadership system in which Directors have genuine delegated authority and act as enterprise leaders first.

The Leader We Are Looking For

• We are looking for an enterprise integrator - a leader who sees the whole system, connects functions and resolves dependencies without taking over specialist work.
• You will bring strong execution judgement: knowing what must be driven, sequenced, stopped, escalated or delegated to keep strategy moving within organisational capacity.
• You will be comfortable leading through senior leaders, setting clear expectations and holding outcomes while giving functional leaders genuine room to lead.
• You will combine performance orientation with learning agility - creating visibility and accountability without reducing performance to compliance, activity tracking or bureaucracy.
• Most importantly, you will bring an enterprise-first mindset, constructive challenge and relational authority - making the whole SmartStart system execute better without becoming the system.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy Translation & Enterprise Performance

• Translate CEO/Board-approved strategy into enterprise priorities, annual and multi-year operating plans, measurable outcomes and clear accountabilities.
• Own the enterprise planning architecture and ensure functional plans collectively add up to the strategy rather than optimise separate portfolios.
• Sequence priorities and strategic initiatives against organisational capacity, dependencies and available resources, maintaining line of sight from strategy to functional and team outcomes.
• Ensure strategic choices are converted into explicit implications for the operating model, capabilities, resources and ways of working.
• Own the enterprise performance rhythm, including the Balanced Scorecard, strategic priorities, execution reviews and corrective-action mechanisms.
• Hold Directors accountable for agreed functional and cross-functional outcomes while preserving their delegated authority.
• Identify execution risks, bottlenecks and underperformance early and ensure accountable leaders resolve them.
• Use evidence, data and organisational learning to adapt execution without allowing constant reprioritisation to destabilise delivery.

Enterprise Integration, Operating Model & Delivery

• Lead the Directors and other designated enterprise execution leaders as an integrated leadership team, in line with the emerging organisational structure.
• Create mechanisms for cross-functional planning, decision-making and delivery across functional areas, including strategic integration with the CFO and Finance.
• Resolve competing priorities, ownership gaps and material cross-functional dependencies that cannot be resolved at functional level.
• Ensure leaders act as enterprise leaders first and functional leaders second, using time-bound SteerCos where standing line structures are insufficient.
• Own enterprise-level operating-model coherence and hold Scale & Replication as an enterprise accountability rather than an isolated functional silo.
• Translate the shift from implementer toward enabler/field catalyst into concrete changes in effort, capabilities, governance and measures of success.

Balance current programme/network delivery with the development of platform, partnership and ecosystem models required for future scale.

• Hold enterprise accountability for delivery performance without taking specialist programme/network decisions away from the relevant Director.
• Ensure alignment between programme design, network/field enablement, platform capability, evidence and ecosystem commitments, with cross-functional quality and safeguarding risks escalated and resolved.
• Ensure network governance and shared-authority mechanisms are integrated with internal execution where SmartStart cannot rely on line authority alone.
• Resource Priorities, Leadership & Organisational Effectiveness.
• Own enterprise resource-priority recommendations and integrate functional resource needs into coherent choices.
• Partner with the CFO on affordability, financial scenarios, resource allocation and major investment trade-offs while respecting the CFO’s fiduciary and financial authority.
• Ensure resource decisions reflect strategy, expected impact, delivery capacity and opportunity cost, and surface what should stop, defer, simplify or be redesigned when capacity is exceeded.
• Hold management accountability for the overall performance and effectiveness of the Director leadership layer.
• Partner with People & Organisational Capability so leadership, organisation design, talent, culture, performance and change interventions are connected to execution needs.

Continuous Improvement, Decision Architecture & C-Suite Stewardship

• Drive removal of duplication, unclear ownership, unnecessary process and organisational friction that impede strategy execution.
• Ensure learning from evidence, implementation, partners and performance is translated into changes in plans, operating model or priorities.
• Define and maintain enterprise decision rights, delegated authorities and escalation pathways, ensuring decisions are made at the right level by the right accountable leader.
• Ensure governance forums have clear mandates, do not duplicate line accountability and produce named owners, implementation pathways and review points.
• Distinguish controllable execution failure, system constraints, reasonable experimentation and external dependencies so accountability supports rather than suppresses learning.
• Provide the CEO with a clear, unvarnished view of execution reality, organisational capacity, performance and emerging enterprise risks.
• Translate material CEO/Board commitments into accountable internal execution without becoming the owner of external relationships that sit elsewhere.
• Maintain constructive, high-trust partnerships with the CEO, CFO and Chief of Staff while protecting clear role boundaries and representing SmartStart externally where delegated and execution credibility is material.

Requirements

Qualifications & Experience

• Relevant postgraduate qualification or equivalent executive experience in business, strategy, operations, public management, development, organisational leadership or a related field.
• Substantial senior executive experience leading a complex, multi-functional organisation or major enterprise portfolio through strategy execution, transformation and scale.
• Demonstrated accountability for organisational performance, enterprise planning, operating-model execution and cross-functional integration.
• Experience leading senior functional executives and creating strong delegated accountability rather than centralising decisions.
• Strong experience in complex stakeholder, networked, public-interest, development or social-impact environments is highly advantageous.
• Demonstrated ability to work across programme/service delivery, technology/platform, evidence, partnerships, people/capability and finance interfaces. Experience scaling through partners or moving from direct implementation toward enabling others is strongly advantageous.

Specific Knowledge

• Strong understanding of enterprise strategy execution, integrated planning and organisational performance management.
• Strong understanding of operating-model design, cross-functional integration and execution governance.
• Knowledge of performance systems, Balanced Scorecards, execution reviews and corrective-action mechanisms.
• Understanding of resource prioritisation, organisational capacity, trade-offs and opportunity-cost decision-making.
• Strong understanding of decision rights, delegated authority, escalation pathways and governance forum design.
• Understanding of leadership, organisation design, culture, talent and change as enablers of strategy execution.
• Strong systems and scale thinking, including network, platform, partnership and ecosystem enablement models.
• Understanding of shared-authority environments in which relational authority matters alongside formal hierarchy.
• Credibility with Boards, funders, government, partners and senior external stakeholders while remaining primarily accountable for enterprise execution.

Skills and Competencies

• Enterprise integration and systems thinking across multiple functions and stakeholder environments.
• Strong execution judgement, strategic translation and prioritisation discipline.
• Ability to lead through senior leaders, hold outcomes and preserve genuine delegated authority.
• Strong performance orientation balanced with learning agility and productive challenge.
• Excellent decision-making, problem-solving and cross-functional dependency resolution.
• Constructive challenge and ability to provide an unvarnished view of execution reality.
• Relational authority and ability to lead effectively where formal line authority is limited.
• Ability to simplify complexity, reduce organisational friction and avoid unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Strong communication, stakeholder management and executive presence.
• Enterprise-first mindset with low territoriality and respect for specialist role boundaries.
• Ability to adapt execution using evidence and feedback rather than defend plans that are no longer working
• Deep commitment to SmartStart’s mission, Purple Practices and the shift toward enabling network and ecosystem scale.

Employment Equity

SmartStart is committed to employment equity, diversity and inclusion. Preference may be given to suitably qualified candidates from designated groups, in line with SmartStart's Employment Equity commitments and applicable legislation.

Benefits

Total Cost to Company (Medical Aid, Provident Fund & Risk Benefits)