Manager of Foresight

Company Description:

McDonald’s is proud to be one of the most recognized brands in the world, with restaurants in over 100 countries that serve 70 million customers daily. As the global leader in the food service industry, our legacy of innovation and hard work continues to drive us.

From drive thru updates to delivery to mobile order and pay, we are innovating quickly and growing. Joining McDonald's means thinking big and preparing for a career that can have influence around the world.

At McDonald’s, we see every day as a chance to create positive impact. We lead through our values centered on inclusivity, service, integrity, community and family. From support of Ronald McDonald House Charities to our Youth Opportunity project and sustainability initiatives, our values keep us dedicated to using our scale for good: good for our customers, people, industry and planet.

Job Description:

The Foresight Manager is a key member of the Foresight & Capabilities Exploration team, within Global Insights & Analytics at McDonald’s. This newly created role has been specially designed to find the right individual to help push planning of the global McDonald’s organization further into the future through futures thinking and skills.

The successful candidate holds the right mindset needed for a foresight practitioner: we’re looking for a learner, someone who is observational, enjoys connecting dots, and is comfortable in the face of uncertainty. But above all, someone who is curious and frequently asks ‘what if’.

This role is both creative and scientific in nature, and therefore the ideal candidate is also analytically minded; able to approach problems from both an imaginative and a methodical perspective.

Key Technical Responsibilities

• Support the Director of Foresight in driving corporate-wide culture change toward bringing the outside world into McDonald’s and planning beyond a 3-year horizon.
• Lead foresight horizon scanning, creating a systematic approach to observing the external changes in the environment to make sense of them for the McDonald’s organization.
• Lead and support in foresight projects that explore future themes, including research, analysis and deployment globally.
• Develop and lead a strategy to propel the futures skills beyond the foresight team to the wider McDonald’s organization, bringing the outside in and aiding in skill building.
• Manage existing partnerships with foresight agencies and explore new agencies that build our expertise in futures planning.
• Collaborate with select global functions and top 10 markets to deploy foresight work and support in workshops that turn futures thinking into action plans.
• Network with external foresight practitioners to help us learn from peers and bring in new tools and methods.

Qualifications:

The ideal applicant will have worked within the creative / media sector with the following skills, experience, and personal qualities:

• Degree in Business, Social Sciences or similar where focus areas covered strategy, marketing, journalism, sociology, politics, research / analytics.
• Strong experience within strategic or planning role
• Successful track record of cross functional project management or leading research / products from concept to launch.

Personal Qualities:

• Ability to work in a complex decentralized organization and influence diverse functional partners towards decision and action.
• Strong analytical skills and ability to connect seemingly disparate points of data.
• Demonstratable communication skills, specifically in storytelling. Confident presenting ideas to leadership.
• Confidence in standing alone on a point or provoking an alternative perspective.
• Curious, observational mindset with the ability to inspire what’s possible.

Additional Information:

Good to Know:

The successful applicant can expect to travel internationally / domestically regularly (once per quarter and up to monthly depending on requirements).