Vice President / General Manager

Founded in 1912, Illinois Tool Works Inc. (NYSE: ITW) is a diversified, Fortune 200 manufacturing company that delivers specialized expertise, innovative thinking, and value-added products to meet critical customer needs in a variety of industries. Ranked among Fortune’s Magazine’s most admired companies, the company focuses on solid growth, improving profitability and strong returns across its worldwide platforms and divisions. These divisions serve customers and markets around the globe, with a significant presence in developed as well as emerging markets. ITW’s revenues totaled $12.6 billion in 2020.

ITW Medical is comprised of two highly-respected medical product brands - Coeur & Filtertek – supplying medical devices and components to global medical device brands. Filtertek manufactures molded filtration and flow control components. Coeur is a leading provider of disposable diagnostic imaging consumables. 

Duties and Responsibilities

The VP/GM will be tasked with executing the overall growth strategy for the business. The VP/GM will provide strategic direction as the company looks to broaden its product portfolio, expand its markets, and sustain its cost position. The VP/GM will define short and long term strategic, financial and operational goals with the objectives of growing organic revenue.

• Establish, refine, and execute Long Range Plan growth initiatives that drive organic growth through focused selling, core market expansion, and customer-back innovation.
• Use voice of the customer to refine the strategic roadmap and drive product innovation.
• Achieve market share gains by building a strategy to counteract competitive pressures.
• Development of a channel strategy given the existence of a well-established channel and a new emerging channel.
• Development of a strong product offering as low-cost competitors enter the market.
• Drive differentiation from the competition through a defined value proposition (reliability, quality, responsiveness) and enhanced go-to-market strategies that target key end markets.
• Work with customers, end users, channel partners, sales and marketing to identify competitive gaps, core competencies and sustainable differentiation.
• Complete the portfolio analysis of the division, including an 80/20 front to back.
• Models 80/20 excellence and application of the ITW Toolbox to drive variable margin, align overhead costs, and drive continuous improvement through Enterprise initiatives.
• Assess the current leadership pipeline, identify critical skill sets and gaps, develop talent, and focus organizational resources to achieve long term initiatives.
• Leads and behaves from an “enterprise first” perspective.

Qualifications & Experience

The successful candidate’s qualifications will possess strong general management skills, with a combination of sales/market understanding and experience in manufacturing/operations.

• Track record of driving sustainable differentiated innovation strategies via organic growth (targeting selling, core expansion, and customer back innovation). Proven business strategy development and execution, synthesizing internal and customer data and organizational capability to build a product roadmap and go-to-market, multi-channel strategy.
• Experience developing and managing existing channels with emerging channels. Experience with Industrial Supply Channels.
• Full P&L responsibility for an industrial business of more than $100M in revenue. Demonstrated financial acumen of income statements, balance sheets, cash flows, and other metrics to achieve strategic and financial objectives.
• Hired, developed, and retained a diverse talent pipeline.
• Managed multiple locations and geographically dispersed teams.
• Experience leading customer back innovation.    
• Aligned and led cross-functional teams (R&D, Business Development, Sales, Marketing, Operations, HR, and Finance) under a unified business strategy.
• Led significant change in structure, process or systems, and enrolled other in change.
• Bachelor’s degree required; MBA is preferred.

Competencies/Personal Attributes

Make Great Strategic Choices

• Strategic Thinker/Sees Big Picture: Has a vision for the division that aligns with the company’s enterprise strategy.
• Progressively leads an organization towards the achievement of a long-term strategy and anticipates the impact of potential changes in the market and customer base.
• Recognizes opportunity cost implications associated with strategic choices.
• Understands sustainable differentiation and invests to create, build, and defend.
• Growth-Oriented: Looks for opportunities to expand current capabilities into new markets, explores new technologies to expand customer base.
• Customer-Centric: Constantly seeks and listens to the voice of the customer.

Deliver Great Results

• Delivers near term business improvement (organic growth and margins) while simultaneously investing in sustaining the core competitive advantages and maximizing its long term profitable growth potential.
• Continuous Improvement Mindset: Believes there is always room to improve and actively seeks the next level of performance. Introduces Best Practices.
• Ability to work through others and assess and drive organizational focus on the “80” issues and opportunities.

Great Talent Manager

• Ability to Hire A-players/Develops People: Strong coach/mentor that shares talent for their development.
• Hires, develops, and retains a diverse pipeline of great leadership “A” talent.
• Assesses performance objectively; makes the tough calls when necessary. Motivating.

Strong Leadership:

• Always acts with integrity. Lives/embodies our values with global cultural awareness.
• Leads and behaves from an “enterprise first” perspective.
• Collaborative: Fosters a team environment where the exchange of ideas is encouraged. Engages with customers, employees, and senior management in discussions on change.
• Takes ownership and drives positive change and challenges the status quo. Addresses issues with courage.
• Manages Complexity & Ambiguity/Decisive: Has a systematic approach to problem solving. Uses data and information to drive decisions, but moves forward with incomplete information. Deals well with uncertainty. Can make quick decisions when warranted.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

ITW is an equal opportunity employer. We value our colleagues’ unique perspectives, experiences and ideas and create workplaces where everyone can develop their careers and perform to their full potential. 

As an equal employment opportunity employer, ITW is committed to equal employment opportunity and fair treatment for employees, beginning with the hiring process and continuing through all aspects of the employment relationship. 

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, age, disability, protected Veteran status or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws.