Interim Country Head of Finance — Value Agenda (Business Services)

The arguments one set of numbers has to settle

One financial view sounds like a systems project. It is mostly a series of judgement calls about definitions, and each has winners and losers. The Interim Country Head of Finance will make them.

What is revenue, and when? In professional services, revenue on long engagements, unbilled work and disputed fees can be treated in several defensible ways, and each practice will prefer the one that flatters it. What is margin? Whether shared costs are allocated by headcount, by revenue or by usage changes which services look profitable, and therefore where capital goes. Which source is the truth? When the practice management system and the ledger disagree, someone has to decide which one wins and who corrects the other. And when does a local difference deserve to survive? Some country conventions exist for regulatory or contractual reasons; others exist because nobody has challenged them.

The appointment carries the executive authority to settle these questions. You will set how the country's finance decisions are allocated, including what stays with local leaders, and select the single evidence base for governing investment, resourcing and controls. Commitments continue or stop on your say. You will block proposals that move cost or risk while no one is accountable for it, decline investment where adoption, dependencies or the downside are missing, approve the route by which issues reach you and decide how often the board hears about progress, exceptions and unsettled choices.

Twenty-four months to a number everyone uses

In the first ninety days, you and the Group Chief Financial Officer should settle common financial definitions, a single data source and a country close calendar. By month nine, capital and operating decisions should be taken from that single view, with reconciling items owned and closing rather than carried forward. By month 24, one financial view should be embedded in how the country makes decisions, and a successor finance team should be running it without your involvement.

The person for the arguments

You have carried a culture reset whose effects were felt from the boardroom to client-facing teams, in organisations where revenue reached $755 million or more, people numbered 2,600 or more and operations spanned seven countries. In your record, evidence has visibly redirected staff, capital and senior attention. Culture reset, professionalisation and buy-side M&A form the experience the finance chief will test, with capital allocation expected at level 4 and controls and reporting, FP&A forecasting and risk judgement at level 3. Culture is the part most often underestimated: practices agree to a common definition in a meeting and revert to their own in the next forecast, unless the people running them come to prefer the shared number. You grow successors during the change itself, so the new model keeps working after you leave. Unresolved points are on the table in your reporting, not a reason for delay. You will end a commitment once the evidence says so, whether or not every country leader agrees, and you will answer for the full 24 months.

Meeting the finance chief and the board

We begin in week one, with a discreet video call with the Group Chief Financial Officer. Week three belongs to the Risk Committee Chair, who will examine with you how a single financial view changes what risk the business can see. The fifth week is set aside for an in-person meeting with executive leaders from each function, and week 7 for a discussion with the board's directors. Within four working days of each stage, we will let you know in writing how it went.