Assistant Manager, Future & External Insights

India is among the top ten priority markets for General Mills, and hosts our Global Shared Services Centre. This is the Global Shared Services arm of General Mills Inc., which supports its operations worldwide. With over 1,300 employees in Mumbai, the center has capabilities in the areas of Supply Chain, Finance, HR, Digital and Technology, Sales Capabilities, Consumer Insights, ITQ (R&D & Quality), and Enterprise Business Services. Learning and capacity-building is a key ingredient of our success.

We exist to make food the world loves. But we do more than that. Our company is a place that prioritizes being a force for good, a place to expand learning, explore new perspectives and reimagine new possibilities, every day. We look for people who want to bring their best - bold thinkers with big hearts who challenge one other and grow together. Because becoming the undisputed leader in food means surrounding ourselves with people who are hungry for what's next.​

OVERVIEW

The Insights and Analytics organization within General Mills Strategy and Growth function is responsible for delivering integrated consumer, customer, category, and business performance insights to power smarter, faster decisions and next-best actions, enabling precision in brand strategies, campaign execution, media and investment optimization across our US businesses and brands. The Insights and Analytics org has integrated teams operating from our Minneapolis and India offices, and this role is in our Strategic & Commercial Insights team.

Purpose of the role

Lead the India-based team for Future & External Insights organization, with primary accountability for advancing competitive intelligence for North America Retail, as well as, coaching and elevating the output for your team.

The Future & External Insights(FEI) team, within the Strategic & Commercial Insights org in I&A, builds the understanding, conviction, and empathy that helps General Mills business partners make bolder, more consumer-centric decisions. This team sits at the intersection of people, culture, and the marketplace - tracking who consumers are and what drives them, what culture is producing and where it's heading, and what competitors and the external environment are signaling about where things are going next.

This role is at the intersection of future-facing insight, business acumen, and influential storytelling, making meaning from many inputs and translating it into actions teams can take. In addition, this role is designed to strengthen day-to-day deliverables through mentorship and coaching of the India FEI talent and ensure the team's work reflects an integrated lens across consumer, culture, and competition.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

Oversee recurring competitive and adjacent deliverables of the team, and coach and elevate the India-based FEI team (40%)

• Oversee and improve recurring outputs that help stakeholders mine current competitive activity more effectively, including work such as Hotlist, Peer Pulse, Customer Pulse, and related competitive monitoring activities.
• Ensure deliverables have strong strategic framing, clear takeaways, and consistent quality.
• Coach team members responsible for recurring publications while raising the standard for speed, relevance, and storytelling.
• Help each team member sharpen their analytical thinking, storytelling, synthesis, and business relevance.
• Guide the team towards stronger integration across recurring and ad hoc deliverables so that the output is not siloed by a topic.

Lead competitive intelligence for the FEI org (30%)

• Own the competitive intelligence agenda for FEI organization, ensuring the team is consistently surfacing what competitors are doing, why it matters, and what it means for General Mills.
• Develop a clear point of view on competitive moves across brands, categories, channels, innovation, messaging, partnerships, and capability shifts.
• Directly own competitive inspiration as an individual leadership deliverable for the role. Curate best-in-class examples, emerging plays, and provocative case studies that inspire brand and insight teams to think differently.
• Bring an external lens that helps the organization learn not only from direct competitors, but also from adjacent categories, insurgent brands, and culturally relevant operators.
• Translate fragmented signals into crisp, actionable stories and implications for business partners and internal stakeholders.
• Identify where near-term competitor activity connects to broader marketplace, consumer, and cultural shifts.

Integrate culture into competition (15%)

• Guide work that sits at the intersection of culture and competition, recognizing that some outputs may formally sit under cultural workstreams while still bringing the competitive environment to life.
• Specifically, help shape efforts like the Hotlist so they are leveraged not only as cultural readouts, but as culturally relevant views into competitive change.
• Ensure the team consistently connects marketplace activity to broader cultural momentum, rather than treating these as separate lenses.

Build an integrated way of working across consumer, culture, and competition (15%)

• Reinforce a team model where consumer, culture, and competition are threads running through all major workstreams rather than standalone silos.
• Encourage collaboration across initiative owne rs so the team's work feels connected, cumulative, and sharper in implication.
• Partner closely with FEI Leader and other stakeholders to ensure the team's remit is delivered in a way that is both specialized and highly collaborative.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

• The organization has stronger access to competitive inspiration that helps teams see what is changing and how to respond.
• The team consistently reflects an integrated lens across consumer, culture, and competition.
• The India team is better coached, better connected, and able to operate with less day-to-day oversight while maintaining high standards.
• Competitive intelligence is more proactive, sharper in implication, and more tightly connected to business action.
• Recurring deliverables such as Hotlist, Peer Pulse, and related monitoring outputs are elevated in clarity, integration, and strategic value.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

• 8-9 years in consumer insights, strategy, brand/marketing strategy, trend/cultural intelligence, competitive intelligence
• 9+ years of consumer insights experience in an agency or with a client working on in strategy, brand/marketing strategy, trend/cultural intelligence, competitive intelligence

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Education - Master's degree or MBA with specialization in Market research or Marketing
• Comfort with multiple data sources (quantitative, qualitative, cultural, behavioral, Euromonitor, social, Nielsen RMS, Panel, and internal tools) and integrating them seamlessly
• Must have strong experience in competitive intelligence, strategic insights, or external insights
• Signal translation: Demonstrates identifying meaningful shifts (consumer/cultural/marketplace) and turning them into implications, decisions, or partner direction
• Proven ability to lead and coach teams, especially in a matrixed or cross-geography model
• Excellent synthesis and storytelling skills, with the ability to turn disparate signals into clear business implications
• Strong judgment in connecting competitive, cultural, and consumer signals
• Ability to balance hands-on delivery with team leadership
• Comfort working across recurring reporting, strategic synthesis, and inspiration-oriented work
• Must have strong written and verbal communication skills to effectively interact with diverse stakeholders and team members globally