The position of a regional operations director is a type of job that is the direct offshoot from the effects of globalization. When many organizations started venturing beyond their native territorial boundaries in search of lucrative business opportunities in other countries, they started opening numerous branches in those different areas. As a consequence of this, they needed to apply the necessary business strategy of dividing the scope of their operations into regions in order to make the different branches more manageable, as such a regional operations director was needed to oversee each identified region.
The region in question is simply a division that is made according to the scope of the company’s total field of operations. As such, it could mean a number of states within a country, or it could involve a number of countries outside the native country. Usually, the different subsidiaries and branches have managers who oversee the daily operations of the company, with a regional operations director serving in a supervisory capacity over all of the other managers in the specified region since all of them would be under his or her jurisdiction. The regional operations director would have the responsibility of assessing the performance of these managers in consonance with their achievements in incorporating the corporate goal of the parent company. When the regional director identifies any underperforming branch, he or she would have to conduct a detailed investigation in order to find out the problem and proffer solutions to fix it.
People in this position are expected to have exemplary leadership qualities in order to successfully manage the often large number of employees under their management. The job also involves a lot of shuttling between branches that may be located in other countries. This means that the job naturally requires a lot of movement and traveling from one country to another, across several time zones, often on short notice, in order to effectively deal with the issues that may arise in any of the subsidiaries. The regional operations manager must also implement any instructions that are handed out by the headquarters to the various regional managers. For instance, if the regional manager is overseeing a particular region of a fast-food chain, the director would have to implement any directions regarding compliance with a particular aspect of labor law, human resource directives, or even factors like a change in the menu.
