VP, Business Operations

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Business Operations (“Biz Ops”) is a newly established function at SPE that plays a critical role in driving the company’s growth and achieving its strategic ambitions. The team is responsible for identifying and evaluating transformative opportunities, ensuring they align with SPE’s unique capabilities, and partnering across the organization and with external stakeholders to bring these ideas to life. With a mandate to expand SPE’s impact, Biz Ops combines strategic thinking with practical execution, serving as a key advisor to executive leadership.

As an engine for growth, Biz Ops influences the company’s strategic direction, helps put the right resources and systems in place, and shapes opportunities that leverage SPE’s differentiated assets to create innovative partnerships for artists, brands, and platforms. The work requires a dynamic, entrepreneurial mindset — comfortable operating with incomplete information – and the ability to manage cross-functional initiatives by maintaining clear, consistent communication. Team members must be able to balance big picture vision with hands-on execution to maintain focus and ensure well-informed decision-making.

The VP, Business Operations reports to the EVP, Business Operations and will be responsible for the following key areas:

Responsibilities

• Strategic Vision and Planning: Work closely with Strategy, Business, and Corporate colleagues to develop and execute comprehensive growth plans for SPE’s core businesses (Motion Picture, SPT, SPNI, Crunchyroll, and Alamo Drafthouse/Experiences), ensuring alignment with the company's overall vision and objectives.
• Collaborate with members of company and divisional leadership to evaluate existing plans (and performance) in comparison to opportunities in the marketplace.
• Drive refinements, shifts, and transformations to ensure optimal allocation of resources against the most attractive risk-adjusted strategic bets.
• Business Formation: Identify and develop new profit streams, by advancing/evolving existing businesses or supporting the company’s expansion into new ones.
• Evaluate and implement sourcing, deal-making, financing, development, production/execution, and monetization strategies that align to the company’s existing capabilities and resources or make the case for adding new ones.
• Build robust financial and business cases/plans for new initiatives, including revenue projections, cost analysis, and risk assessments.
• Collaborate with key creative, business, operating, and financial stakeholders to determine key risks and opportunities related to the overall effort and execution of it.
• Identify and recruit, and/or work with Corporate Development to acquire, top talent and other assets to support the execution of strategic initiatives and enhance business operations.
• Market Analysis and Opportunity Identification: Conduct in-depth market assessments to identify growth opportunities, competitive dynamics, and emerging trends in the media and entertainment industry.
• Promote a culture of critical thinking and curiosity through pursuit (and collection) of key market intelligence and performance data.
• Leverage this information and perspective across all SPE businesses to analyze audience behavior, content consumption patterns, and technological advancements to inform decision-making.
• Partnership and Alliance Building: Identify and cultivate high-impact strategic and commercial partnerships with key industry players, including talent, IP owners, networks, streaming platforms, consumer brands, and technology providers.
• Evaluate connectivity and points of overlap with our existing businesses, enabling effective integration and positive-sum collaboration across SPE.
• Prioritize arrangements that can lead to differentiated strategic position, outsized profits, or inexpensive access to high-value capabilities.
• Collaborate with key internal stakeholders to negotiate high-impact deals that maximize value and drive profitable growth.
• Operational Excellence: Foster a culture of collaboration and coordination across the company by demonstrating intentionality, innovation, and information sharing.
• Take time to learn how our businesses work, including first and second order influences.
• Push for continuous improvement modeling behaviors that promote a culture of accountability including humility, vulnerability, and rigor.
• Work with corporate and business teams to streamline operational processes without oversimplifying or implying uniformity of creative, teams, processes, or outcomes.
• Stakeholder Communication: Outline, draft, revise, and deliver material communications to the team, executive leadership, corporate and operating colleagues, and external stakeholders.
• Communicate progress, challenges, and opportunities effectively to ensure alignment and support across the organization.
  
  

CORE COMPETENCIES AND BEHAVIORS

Skills

Biz Ops has a “C.H.E.C.K. Yourself” philosophy, necessary to building trust with colleagues and peers, subject matter expertise, and critical thinking skills:

• CURIOUS: Desire to learn – both about specific topics and how to grow as a professional. Willingness to ask questions and to question one’s own thinking/experiences. Team members approach challenges and opportunities with an open mind about how to tackle them, not with the conclusions already in hand.
• HUMBLE: One’s knowledge relative to others is tiny relative to all available knowledge. Recognition that outcomes are some combination of skill, circumstances, and luck – not always in the same proportion.
• EMPATHETIC: Working effectively with others requires an understanding of where they see themselves relative to others, including you. Priorities, planning, and actions are informed by incentives, context, and individual experience – they operate in a feedback loop that is unlikely to be effectively altered by evaluating outcomes without understanding process.
• CONFIDENT: Trust in one’s intentions and abilities should affirm contributions to a project. Skills can always be honed, and expertise can gained, but only with the self-assurance that participation is warranted. It takes just as much confidence to ask a question admitting a lack of knowledge as it does to make an informed declaration. Arrogance is confidence without humility and curiosity.
• KNOWLEDGEABLE: Expertise, information, and insight are valuable inputs to informed decision-making. Critical judgments should be made with the benefit of both evidence and perspective, which is separated from opinion by the pattern recognition developed through experience and reflection.
  
  

Experience & Skills

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Economics, Finance, Engineering, or a related field; MBA or advanced degree preferred.
• 12 years of experience in strategy/Corp Dev, strategic planning, business operations, operations, or a similar role within the media and entertainment industry.
• Proven track record of developing and executing successful business strategies that drive growth and profitability.
• Direct experience refashioning or pivoting an existing business or developing, building, launching, and scaling an entirely new business line.
• Strong operational expertise with the ability to translate strategic plans into actionable initiatives.
• Exceptional analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
• Demonstrated history of intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to translate complex strategic, financial, and operational information into clear, compelling communications
• Demonstrated executive presence and interpersonal effectiveness, with a proven ability to influence stakeholders at all levels
• Able to translate complicated financial, contractual, strategic, or operational minutiae into relevant, digestible outputs.
• Demonstrated leadership capabilities, including talent development and performance management.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and manage multiple priorities simultaneously.
• Deep understanding of the media and entertainment industry and its various business lines.
  
  

Sony Pictures Entertainment is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other protected characteristics. To request an accommodation for purposes of participating in the hiring process, you may contact us at SPE_Accommodation_Assistance@spe.sony.com.

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