Director - Customer Experience

JOB SUMMARY

The Director, Customer Experience – Growth is a key member of the Market Strategy & Planning organization that provides customer and competitive insight and strategy in support of the entire organization with a focus on Growth. The Director will provide insight and strategy support to identify and evaluate opportunities for growth, including new brands, acquisitions, and partnerships. A critical role of the Director will be to understand key questions that are being (or should be) asked by the business teams, identify the appropriate approaches and business information sources (including research, analytics, and third-party information) to answer such questions, and synthesize data and insights into actionable steps to drive the business forward.

CANDIDATE PROFILE

Education and Experience 
•    MBA preferred 
•    8+ years’ experience in corporate strategy or management/strategy consulting, demonstrating progressive career growth and a pattern of exceptional performance
•    Demonstrated ability in translating consumer insights, research and analytics into actionable strategy
•    Experience supporting transformational strategies for business units
•    Demonstrated ability to deliver results under difficult conditions, particularly when faced with complexity and ambiguity
•    Demonstrated ability to synthesize business and consumer data from multiple sources into insights with practical application to business needs
•    Experience applying basic business strategy frameworks (e.g., 3 C’s, 4P’s, Porter’s 5 Forces)
•    Experience using a hypothesis-driven approach to answer a business question and identifying ways to test a hypothesis
•    Demonstrated quantitative acumen, including ability to use excel to conduct basic data analysis; experience working with data / analytics teams
•    Demonstrated quantitative and analytical skills as well as demonstrated ability to find structure, logic, and insight in complex business problems to provide meaningful conclusions
•    Strong project management skills and experience balancing multiple projects or responsibilities simultaneously

CORE WORK ACTIVITIES 
•    Supports Enterprise Strategy

o    Supports insight generation, synthesis, and resulting strategic recommendations that drive customer engagement, differentiated brand positioning, and impactful marketing strategies and partnerships.
o    Partners/advises business leaders as recommendations and strategies are brought to life.
o    In collaboration with senior leaders and business partners, identifies and prioritizes high-impact business needs and initiatives in accordance with the customer strategy. 
o    Connects the dots between insight sources (research, analytics, third party sources) and business goals to develop and communicate recommendations that inform business strategy and action.

•    Owns strategy inputs to enterprise Growth work, including:

o    Building thought leadership on the future state of the industry, white spaces, and where MI has a competitive advantage to grow
o    Maintaining robust intelligence on competitive moves and strategy, particularly in targeted growth areas
o    Contribute to due diligence for growth initiatives
o    Enabling Marriott to move quickly in new growth initiatives by crisply framing a problem space, potential paths, and tradeoffs, and owning the project from problem definition to final recommendation
o    Supporting development of a 3-5 year strategic vision for growth, from a consumer, competitive, owner, and shareholder perspective

•    Drives excellence in collaboration and communication across the organization
•    Own pieces of larger, enterprise projects, developing own workplan and hypotheses, identifying data and research to test hypotheses, and synthesizing conclusions into a compelling story

Delivering on the Needs of Key Stakeholders
•    Develops and maintains effective relationships with both internal and external stakeholders 
•    Develops specific goals and plans to prioritize, organize, and accomplish work on specific projects.
•    Collaborates with internal partners across the enterprise to develop business strategies based on consumer insights.
•    Provides expertise on customer needs and industry trends for lodging generally and on specific key initiatives.
•    Communicates concepts in a clear and persuasive manner that is easy to understand.
•    Generates and provides accurate and timely results in the form of reports, presentations, etc.
•    Demonstrates an understanding of business priorities.

MANAGEMENT COMPETENCIES

Leadership
•    Communication - Conveys information and ideas to others in a convincing and engaging manner through