Malawi Field Operations Impact Lead

Seeking a passionate professional with 5+ years of strategic and operational experience to lead Malawi's Impact team, co-define country strategy, manage R&D trials, and scale market access buybacks to directly increase smallholder farmers' resilience.

Management of the HQ Impact team (~25% of bandwidth*)

• Manage 3 or 4 direct reports
• Conduct weekly check-ins providing them with enough feedback to help them continuously improve their overall performance, with stretching projects to expand their professional growth and meaningful contributions to our programs’ impact
• Write semi annual thorough and well-calibrated individual PDRs and goals, as well as promotion plans or performance improvement plan when appropriate
• Continuously review and update the impact team’s org chart, roles and responsibilities, proactively restructuring and hiring as needed per programs’ evolution, ensuring clear alignment between teammates’ role and growth path with their performance and growth potential, as well as our programs’ impact priorities
• Define annual budget related to Impact activities and keep close track of Budget-vs-Actuals to keep it at a minimum level, ensuring grant-funded projects are clearly labelled and assigned to respective grants

Improvement of the core program impact through Excellent Extension(~25% of bandwidth)

• *Strategize, Prioritize & Plan* - Set our country impact strategy together with FOPs Lead, MEL Lead and Country Director, translating it into annual FOPs impact goals and workplan, deriving in individual goals for the Impact HQ and field team
• Collaborate with Global Impact to incorporate org-wide impact priorities, including Excellent Extension, deciding what to do but as importantly what *NOT*to do after realistic consideration of in-country bandwidth constraints and focus needs to ensure we remain impactful and don’t dilute our limited resources into too many different directions that would reduce our overall team’s efficiency and programs’ impact
• *Coordinate & Communicate* - Split responsibilities and follow-up closely with very limited need for manager support to ensure successful and timely execution of all impact initiatives
• Lead compelling communication with the field team on all impact activities, actively preparing and facilitating discussions during Field Leader and AFD meetings, highlighting key messages in talking points for Monday Meetings, sending frequent encouraging messages in WhatsApp groups to enhance momentum around impact activities; single-messaging through multi-channeling and repetitions should be considered as best practice to make a message stick
• *Assess & Improve* - Collaborate with MEL to evaluate our annual and long-term impact, planning and following up on impact assessment and analysis to ensure we focus our resources on the most impactful initiatives
• Systematically challenge status quo and seek how we can provide more impact more effectively, getting inspiration from other countries as well as other organizations
• Monitor impact performance by setting KPIs, dashboards etc. and use them to drive accountability and results towards our targets during weekly field meetings (FL, AFD, Monday)
• Improve the way our agricultural training are designed and delivered with a strong Excellent Extension strategy that is realistically actionable
• Sort out and schedule annual training curriculum by removing some and adding new depending on the needs identified, in line with our seasonal impact priorities
• Conduct improvement and execution of planting, top-dressing, IPM training and SBC initiatives. in the most effective way, using critical thinking and post-mortem to make iterations season after season; decision to NOT repeat an initiative because of negative results can be an effective way to focus on the most impactful activities

Innovations of practices and products via R&D trials (~*25% of bandwidth*)

• Impactful Practices - Co-identify key yield drivers to be tested (spacing, micro dosing etc.) and focus on crops with the biggest yield gap
• Co-define trial set up through partners or clients in a lean manner
• Supervise execution of yield improvement trials
• Co-analyze results and prescribe recommendations on way forward
• Impactful Products - Stay closely connected to farmers’ needs and preferences by regularly conducting farmer needs assessments through field visits, MEL survey data, qualitative research etc. as needed
• Research, select and trial new impactful products in line with country priorities and resources, focusing on products with the highest SROI potential
• Supervise sourcing, troubleshooting and impact measurement of all new impactful products
• Impactful Services - Set strategy, implement and analyze sustainability of new service trials (e.g.: buy-back), focusing on services with the highest SROI potential
• Scale and boost adoption of the most impactful products (legumes, trees etc.)
• Collect feedback from the field team and advise on which products should be scaled to bring more impact
• Collaborate with Client Acquisition team to prepare and execute compelling marketing materials to boost adoption
• Display autonomous product ownership from identification to distribution on all agricultural products, including liaising with Global Sourcing & LOG and proactively follow up on all agricultural products procurement to ensure impactful products are delivered in a timely manner
• Supervise effective implementation of Social Behavior Change initiatives in line with the program’s new impact priorities (climate change adaptation, soil health etc.)

How to Apply

Please note that we hire on a rolling basis which means that applications are reviewed and processed on a continuous basis until a hire is made. Please report any suspicious communication here (globalhotline@oneacrefund.org), but do not send applications or application materials to this email address.