Why we existMyanmar has some of the worst development indicators in the world: the lowest maternal and under5 child mortality rates in the region a per capital annual income of about USD 1,500 onethird of all children are stunted due to nutritional deficits and disease hate speech and misinformation on Facebook in Myanmar leading to nearly 1 million Rohingyas forced into Bangladesh only 15 of the adult population having a bank account, and roughly the same percentage using formal financial products.However, Myanmar is also a greenfield, largely free of outmoded legacy systems such as feature phones 80 of Myanmar population uses smartphones, with 105 SIM card penetration, large swaths of the economy and public sector are still paperbased, including payments, with paper cash comprising the bulk of transactions. This juxtaposition of good and bad elements provides a novel opportunity: an organization that is capable of introducing modern, Industry 4.0 technology, adapted for the peculiarities of the Myanmar context, can empower Myanmar to leapfrog other countries even rich ones like the United States by leveraging tech for good, with the potential to improve health, rule of law, access to capital indicators in addition to improving efficiency and increasing revenues for over 50 million people.We believe Koe Koe Tech is that organization. We are an IT social enterprise that aims to prove a new paradigm for the prevailing Big Tech model: that software and hardware can be designed with broader societal and philosophical concerns in mind, and that locally grown and adapted technology solutions are the best ones we have spent 6 years building a team of 150 people, 140 of whom are Myanmar nationals, with 58 women and 50 software developers, with 50 female engineers.If we prove this new paradigm, we present not only a challenge to Big Tech but also to development aid itself, the latter of which is one of the last sectors not to have faced disruptive innovation, which still has many inefficiencies, especially with regards to technology. We can be a new model for tech companies and organizations around the world, and indeed, at scale we are interested in replicating our theory of the firm in other countries.We are now beginning to scale up promising pilots that will be sustainable businesses: digital maternal cash transfers with our maternal and child health mobile application that can significantly reduce child stunting nationwide, as well as tax and utilities software and IoT smart meters that have tripled government revenues and can open a channel to widespread access to capital by citizens, SMEs, and corporate alike through transaction credit scoring data. We need an experienced operator to scale up these innovative product and service lines nationally and then internationally. You may be the right person for the job.For more information, please visit www.koekoetech.com . You can also read media coverage of some of our work here:https:www.economist.comasia20180621inmyanmarsexeducationcomesfromsmartphoneshttps:www.economist.comasia20171116myanmarhasoneofthelowesttaxtakesintheworldExample of our program work: taxMyanmars government receives some of the lowest revenues from taxes and fees in the region, and particularly so for Myanmars municipal government, with taxes accounting for only 5 of municipal revenue in 201314 . This creates a vicious cycle: since municipal governments are underresourced they cannot provide good civil services to the public as such, citizens have low opinions of government and are reluctant to pay higher taxes.Improving this situation is complex: there may be political economy reasons for the lack of improvement, such as a byzantine internal regulatory process for municipalities that has persisted through the socialist era and is slow to change with Myanmar only recently opening to the world, municipalities are not well aware of best practices and improvements they could make to their civil service provision reskilling municipal staff to handle modern technologies and operations takes time, including training staff in installing and maintaining smart meters as well as winning their trust and support for change management.As weve alluded to before, use of this software has resulted in tripling the revenues of municipalities, largely because from digitizing the data on our SQL database and having economists look at it weve been able to rationalize calculation of taxable income bases for households, which are undervalued by orders of magnitude as reported by the Economist magazine in covering our work. Our software is currently in 12 townships and we are signing contracts with 5060 townships for 2020. Myanmar has 330 townships total.Were adding IoTenabled smart water and smart power meters to this work, which is where a COO Director of Opss skills are particularly needed in combination with a CFO. We are currently piloting IoT smart water meters in one of the townships our software has been running for a couple years. The regional government leader is interested in purchasing our smart water meters for most of the townshipsin the 50township state, which means many more IoT smart meters will need to be produced, distributed, and maintained.Why we want youWe hope that the tax and utilities hardwaresoftware example should make it clear the need for you. Customer service and quality assurance will become key. Managing cash flows in paying for smart meter production and collecting payments from municipalities is mostly a job for our CFO, but the COO Director of Ops will need to coordinate with the CFO on these efforts. This is a big part of your role as COO Director of Ops, as the combination of our software and hardware products and services lines is massively impact and profitable but only it is executed well.We feel we have our Koe Koe Tech work culture nailed pretty well. We have a warm, communityoriented environment that is reflective of Myanmars culture. We are encouraging of diversity, as shown by our actual gender, religious, and ethnic representation. We have a workenvironment where people dont yell at each other, where confrontation is handled, um, nonconfrontationally, which again is a reflection of the indirect Southeast Asian, Myanmar culture. There is high trust and high psychological safety among our team members.Weve created various systems for product development, user testing and ethnography, usercentered design, data collection and analytics, for recruiting and onboarding, for payroll and accounting, for performance management and professional development, for daily project management, etc. These systems have gotten us by, but each has cracks and inefficiencies, which add up, and they are not designed for national or international scale.As a result, we are wasting effort, missing opportunities, and often failing to drive the right organizational behaviors within Koe Koe Tech and within partner organizations We could be generating more earned revenues, closing new deals, streamlining the sales funnel, driving user engagement. We have resources sitting unused, yet our workweeks are busier than they should be. In short, we are not optimized to do our very best.This is not for lack of good intentions, effort, and attentionit is a person that our team has been missing...a person who is obsessed with operational excellence and has the chops to achieve it within the Myanmar context. This is where you come in.You are a designer and refiner of frictionless organizational systems and structures.You are obsessed with optimizing business development, sales, and product development processes, with an eye to quantitatively maximizing earned revenues, social impact, and user engagement.You are a multiplier manager that brings the best out of people.You are an excellent writer and communicator.You are a doer, a tinkerer, and a tactician who enjoys getting into the nittygritty.You are steadfast and organized able to bring balance and order, do it in a way that fosters creativity rather than stifle it, and are respectful of Myanmar culture, where yelling, showing contempt, irritation or condescension is seen as highly disrespectful.You care about protecting and building an enduring organizational culture where all Koe Koe Tech team members thrive, grow, and make a real impact.You are the person to make us hum as a unit.In many ways, you are sought precisely for how youd complement the strengths and weaknesses of Koe Koe Techs cofounders, Mike CEO and Yarzar CTO. This will be an ongoing conversation that takes shape as the working relationship develops. Some examples of how you might complement each other:Mike and Yarzar are resource magnets who consistently attract funding, business, skilled and passionate people, professional support services, mentorship, and partnership opportunities. You can put these resources to good use by matching them to our most critical needs and then skillfully managing their deployment.Yarzar is one of the most talented software developers in Myanmar. He is a technological visionary, pushing Koe Koe Tech towards adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies and practices. You can put Yarzars technical vision into practice, making his ideas sustainable businesses that have low failure rates.Mike is good at making novel connections across fields, such as combining hardware and software work on tax and utilities as a bundle that provides a unique competitive advantage for the Myanmar context, and pushing Koe Koe Tech to use user data to open up channels for access to finance to drive demand for smart meters.Neither Mike nor Yarzar are the most organized people. Both do not gravitate towards processes and structure, instead preferring to engage in creative and readyaimfire thinking and execution. Their approach has negatives, especially in terms of scaling up viable businesses and instituting processes that maximize earned revenues and efficiency. This is probably your most important role as Director of Operations COO: honing and refining Mike and Yarzars wild ideas into sustainable, scalable, and efficient product and service lines.Youve been seeking a role where you dont have to choose between making a difference and making a living. You see a tremendous opportunity here, where you could be the piece that unlocks the potential of Koe Koe Tech, built to make the most significant impact imaginable.Role ResponsibilitiesReporting to the CoFounder and CEO of Koe Koe Tech, you will have the following responsibilities which are mostly internal facing and touch every area of Koe Koe Techs operations: Designer and Maintainer of Organizational Systems to Maximize Earned Revenues and User Engagement: organizing our people, processes, communication, and tools to improve upon our current...product development cycles, which currently lack structure and documentation. For example, a move to Deepa Subramaniams model would be good. Product Developmentusercentered design operations. Our ethnography team does periodic user research but they are inexperienced, with a lack of focus on optimizing customer experience and product market fit. Designsales funnel, where our sales team isnt meeting hard targets on conversions, contract closings, and new leads Salesaccess to accurate financial information to enable strategic budgeting and forecasting Accountingspeed and effectiveness of recruiting and onboarding efforts HRintentionality behind our professional development and learning efforts HRability to track and develop new partnership opportunities Business Developmentconsistency and quality of measured data Monitoring Evaluationand more. Team Manager: providing support, training, supervision, evaluation, and mentorship to enable the full utilization of our talented and missiondriven junior team members. Builder of Organizational Culture: protecting and positively shaping our culture byalways acting in service of Koe Koe Techs mission and core valuescontinuously rooting out and fixing problems that hide and multiplynurturing creativity and innovation but also working to hone new ideas into sustainable, sustainable business models
Job posted: 14.12.2020