Strategy Manager

Role Profile

The Strategy Manager partners with the Strategy Director and senior business leaders to create and lead full strategy “deep dives,” corporate strategy projects, and medium- and long-term strategic planning efforts. The role leads complex analyses, generates insights and best-practice recommendations, evaluates strategic alternatives, and applies key strategy methods to support enterprise and business decision-making.

The Strategy Manager also builds strategy and commercial capability across the organization—developing and delivering training, coaching leaders and teams, and embedding effective strategy, commercial, and planning practices. Depending on business need, the role may sit on a business leadership team as the strategy leader for that business, providing strategic insight, facilitating leadership alignment, and helping guide the execution and evolution of the business strategy.

Operating with minimal supervision in a complex, diversified environment, the Strategy Manager serves as a recognized resource in corporate strategy, strategic planning, strategy execution, and commercial capability building. The role is consulted by senior leaders as functional and business strategies are developed, and is expected to anticipate internal and external challenges and recommend process, product, service, capability, and strategic improvements.

This role will be based in the Kingsport, TN, office.

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Responsibilities

• Translate strategy into execution by partnering with business and functional leaders to define priorities, execution roadmaps, milestones, accountabilities, resource requirements, and measures of success.
• Facilitate the implementation of strategic initiatives across businesses and functions, identifying barriers and helping leaders resolve issues that could affect delivery of strategic objectives.
  Track and monitor the impact of strategy through appropriate financial, operational, commercial, market, customer, and strategic performance measures, and recommend adjustments when conditions require a change in direction.
• Establish and maintain processes for strategy reviews, performance monitoring, strategic learning, and communication of progress and impact to business and executive leadership.
  Serve as the strategy leader on a business leadership team, where applicable, providing strategic direction, commercial insight, portfolio perspective, and leadership support for the development and execution of the business strategy.
• Connect strategy to commercial priorities—customer value creation, market choices, portfolio priorities, pricing and profitability, competitive positioning, and growth plans.
• Lead strategy and commercial capability-building through training, coaching, and mentoring of strategy team members and business partners, embedding strategy, planning, commercial, and execution methods across the organization.
• Partner with Corporate Strategy Management on resource planning, recruiting, capability development, and the effective deployment of strategy team members.
• Contribute to the development of Corporate Strategy tools, processes, best practices, and performance-monitoring approaches, engaging external stakeholders where appropriate.​​​​​​

Scope Boundaries

• Does not typically own the day-to-day operational management of a client business or functional organization, nor the primary ownership of routine operational execution—though the role may engage operational, capital project, or stage-gate teams to evaluate alternatives, support decisions, and ensure recommendations are practical and executable.
• Does not make business decisions independently of the appropriate business, functional, or executive leadership; the role is accountable for structuring analysis, developing recommendations, and facilitating informed strategic decisions.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree is highly preferred. A bachelor’s degree is acceptable for candidates with at least ten years of business experience, including at least three years of strategy experience.
• At least 2–3 years of experience in a strategy role or strategy consulting, along with 5–10 years of experience in a commercial role.
• Progressively responsible experience developing, evaluating, and executing corporate, business, portfolio, product line, commercial, or functional strategies within a complex, diversified, and preferably global organization. Experience in a business-to-business environment is preferred.
• Demonstrated experience independently leading complex, cross-functional strategy engagements from problem definition and analysis through recommendations, executive alignment, and transition to execution, including the ability to structure ambiguous problems and translate analysis into clear strategic choices and actionable plans.
• Evaluating growth opportunities and strategic alternatives is required; relevant experience may include business model innovation, market and portfolio strategy, strategic partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, capital investments, or other enterprise-level decisions.
• Applying financial modeling, valuation, scenario analysis, business-case development, capital allocation, and other financial evaluation techniques to assess strategic alternatives and support investment decisions.
• Monitoring market, customer, technology, regulatory, and competitive developments and translating external insights into strategic implications, risks, opportunities, and recommended actions.
• Contributing to medium- and long-term strategic planning, annual business planning, strategy reviews, balanced scorecard or performance-management processes, and governance forums is preferred.
• Preparing and presenting executive-level analyses and recommendations using PowerPoint, Excel, financial modeling tools, and other analytical or visualization applications, with regular interaction at the vice president and executive levels.
• Serving as a strategy leader, strategic advisor, or member of a business or functional leadership team is preferred, with a track record of influencing strategic direction and delivering outcomes with significant business or global impact.

Functional Skills and Capabilities

• Recognized expertise in strategy tools, frameworks, financial models, valuation approaches, scenario analyses, planning methods, execution methodologies, and performance-management approaches—including their underlying logic—and the judgment to select and apply them to generate insights, evaluate alternatives, and support decisions.
• Strong commercial capability, including the ability to assess customer value creation, market attractiveness, competitive positioning, portfolio choices, pricing and profitability, business models, and growth opportunities, and to connect these considerations to broader business strategy.
• The ability to build strategy and commercial capability across the organization through training, coaching, facilitation, and mentoring—simplifying complex concepts, adapting methods to different audiences, and helping leaders and teams apply them effectively.
• Intellectual curiosity, rapid learning agility, and the ability to anticipate and interpret emerging business, market, competitive, technology, regulatory, and customer developments, using these insights to identify implications, risks, opportunities, and potential strategic responses.
• Executive presence, sound judgment, and discretion, with the ability to communicate complex analyses and recommendations clearly to vice presidents, executive leaders, and other stakeholders, and to influence outcomes without relying solely on formal authority.