Senior Director, Strategy & Transformation

Position Summary

The Senior Director, Strategy & Transformation plays a critical role in supporting the Business Unit Leadership Team to deliver the business strategy, achieve above-market growth, and drive transformative initiatives. The role is responsible for:

• Driving and operationalizing the business unit strategy and Long-Range Plan, collaborating with the Leadership Team, which retains ultimate ownership.
• Developing and executing Value Creation Plans across new growth areas, business transformation initiatives, and operational efficiency programs.
• Accelerating growth through Commercial Excellence, identifying and implementing the actions that unlock above-market growth potential.
• Defining and leading the AI strategy for the business unit, from use-case prioritization and governance through to deployment and measured return.
• Managing the Leadership Team agenda and the adoption of the Culligan Business System, including its tools, processes, and operating rhythm.

Key Responsibilities

The responsibilities below are weighted approximately 75 percent to strategy and transformation and 25 percent to artificial intelligence.

1. Growth and Value Creation Plans

• Support and supercharge top-line growth by developing a pipeline of Value Creation opportunities including, but not limited to, Commercial Excellence disciplines such as value-based selling and upselling.
• Absorb and challenge the business unit sales strategy: size the opportunity in current and new segments, and test growth targets across volume, mix, and pricing for the dealer system
• Maintain a live pipeline of growth and operational efficiency opportunities grounded in consumer insight, market data, and business metrics, so the business stays ahead of the curve.
• Ensure Commercial Excellence and Value Creation Plan initiatives feed the strategy and the Strategy Deployment Process and are financially interlocked into the Long-Range Plan, budget, and actuals, with executable actions, named owners, clear timeframes, and metrics.

2. Strategic Planning

• Build, update, and detail the business unit strategy (where to play, how to win), including multi-year and in-year strategy-in-a-page, strategic initiatives, market and consumer context, organizational implications, and execution plan.
• Support the development and refresh of the Long-Range Financial Plan: identify the key levers of growth, quantify initiatives, opportunities, and threats, and prioritize by impact, effort, and organizational implication.
• Embed Long-Range Plan and strategic initiatives into the Strategy Deployment Process, translating them into executable initiatives with accountable owners, clear timeframes, and measurable targets.
• Develop a deep understanding of the business: market and channel dynamics, dealer economics, consumer insight, business processes, and metrics.
• Work with the Leadership Team, Finance, and the Lean and Continuous Improvement team to ensure strategy deployment through the Culligan Business System, continuously seeding the initiatives needed to deliver the long-term strategy while balancing short-term objectives.

3. Strategy Execution and the Culligan Business System

• Define annual strategic priorities and initiatives (X-Matrix Level 1), aligned to business unit, regional, and corporate priorities, with proper cascading and action planning behind them.
• Ensure strategic initiatives are measured with the right leading indicators (TTIs) and lagging KPIs, appropriate to each business type — Households, Commercial Drinking Water, OEM — and consistent with global definitions and financial reporting.
• Coordinate with Finance and other functions to build crisp monthly, quarterly, and annual business review content: SDP and KPI bowlers, countermeasures, and deep dives across market, volume and price, consumer, marketing, talent, and operations.
• Ensure the impact of initiatives is interlocked into financials, supporting Finance and business owners in modelling and tracking impact, and clearly separating the opportunity funnel from what is actionable and actioned.
• Own the cadence for reviewing the project pipeline, arbitrating sequencing and resources across strategic and operational efficiency projects.

4. Artificial Intelligence Strategy and Roadmap

• Define the business unit's AI strategy — making customer-facing and internal processes faster, better, cheaper, and smarter — aligned to Culligan's global AI agenda and the growth priorities of Culligan Dealer North America.
• Prioritize high-value AI use cases across commercial, service and operations, supply chain, finance, and customer experience, with a clear view of the value at stake in each.
• Build a business-led, multi-year AI roadmap with milestones, investment cases, and expected returns, integrated into the Long-Range Plan and Strategy Deployment Process rather than run as a separate agenda.
• Define and deploy a prioritized set of business agents that create reusable, leverageable capability, focused on business process enablement and on data cleansing and integrity.
• Establish an AI governance framework covering data quality, privacy, security, model risk, and responsible use, in partnership with IT, Legal, and the ERM office.
• Set the ROI framework and performance measures for AI investment, and report progress and realized value to the Leadership Team.
• Represent Culligan Dealer North America in internal and external AI forums, partnerships, and vendor ecosystems, and act as an informed internal spokesperson on AI.

5. AI-Enabled Transformation and Capability Building

• Re-engineer priority processes where AI can improve efficiency, quality, and speed, with early focus on customer contact centers, service and dispatch operations, and back-office administration.
• Embed AI tools and automation into day-to-day operations, partnering with Finance, Operations, and Commercial teams to deploy AI decision support and convert it into productivity and margin gains.
• Support the AI literacy journey across the business unit through structured learning pathways, from general awareness through to practitioner-level application, in partnership with HR.
• Build a culture of confident, responsible AI adoption, and measure capability uplift against clear benchmarks and targets.
• Determine resourcing to support AI, where appropriate, build ROI and then develop a small team of internal and partner resources delivering AI implementations, and build the capability model needed to scale delivery.

6. Leadership Team Effectiveness and Chief of Staff

• Drive the Leadership Team agenda and priorities, linking meeting cadence with financial and operational performance reporting through the Business System.
• Ensure the strategy and plans are properly deployed, cascaded, and communicated, sustaining a strong culture of collaboration, accountability, and customer orientation across the business unit.
• Advise and challenge the Leadership Team, bringing a transparent, data-driven perspective to strategy and key business decisions.
• Influence effectively with and without direct authority, navigating a complex internal, franchise, and dealer stakeholder landscape.
• Serve as a humble, effective leader with a point of view and a sense of ownership rather than a coordinator, role modelling company values and shifting seamlessly between strategic thinking and practical execution.

How the Role Works with IT

The Senior Director, Strategy & Transformation and the IT function are distinct and complementary. The two work closely together, particularly on data infrastructure, platform selection, and deployment, but ownership is clearly divided.

Qualifications: 

• Eight to ten years of experience including experience and strong track record in either top-tier management consulting, private equity, or general management.
• Demonstrated success designing and delivering end-to-end strategic growth initiatives: strategic plans, value creation plans, transformations and integrations, and commercial excellence programs and tools.
• Experience leading large-scale business transformation programs with measurable P&L impact.
• Experience designing or deploying AI or advanced analytics solutions in a commercial context, with demonstrable business impact rather than pilots alone.
• Prior experience in consumer or B2B services — B2B services, telecom, SaaS, utilities, FMCG — or in distributed franchise, dealer, or route-based service models is a plus.

Leadership and Mindset

• Strategic thinker with strong analytical skills paired with business and financial acumen, and a hands-on approach to problem solving.
• Commercially astute and outcome-focused, interested in return on investment rather than technology for its own sake.
• A builder, comfortable creating structure, frameworks, and teams from the ground up.
• Compelling communicator who can translate complex strategic and AI concepts into clear business narratives for dealers, field teams, and executives alike.
• Strong interpersonal skills and a humble approach; highly influential without direct authority, with a strong cultural fit for Culligan and the ability to handle multiple internal and external stakeholders.
• Comfortable operating at both strategic and operational levels, from Leadership Team presentations to program governance detail.

Knowledge and Technical Fluency

• Deep understanding of strategic planning, value creation planning, and commercial excellence methodologies.
• Working understanding of AI and machine learning, generative AI, and agentic architectures, and of where they apply practically in a service business.
• Knowledge of Lean and continuous improvement practices, daily management, and operational excellence frameworks.

Target Salary Range: $220,000 - $230,000 per year plus bonus. Exact pay will be based on factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, level, geographic location, and business and organizational needs. Full-time positions are eligible for competitive benefits, including paid time off, health, dental, vision, life, disability benefits and 401(k).