Interim Group Chief Operating Officer — Operating Renewal

An operating model built from evidence

Operating models in healthcare services are often drawn from the organisation chart outward: who reports to whom, which functions are central, which are local. The better approach starts from the other end, with the evidence of where capacity actually constrains service and what patients and referrers actually receive. The Interim Group Chief Operating Officer will redesign the group's operating model on that basis, reporting to the Board Operations Committee with executive authority for 24 months.

For a listed group, the redesign also has to stand up to outside scrutiny. Investors and regulators will read the result through service quality and continuity, so the model has to be defensible on evidence, not on elegance.

The decisions that are yours

You will design how group decisions are made and fix how far a local service head may go without referring upward. You will define what a request for capital, service capacity or a control change must demonstrate, and give every commitment a verdict: proceed, wait or end. Plans that would shift exposure onto people who are not answerable for it stop with you, as do investment cases that skip adoption, what the change leans on or its downside. You will approve who leads each part of the group and how difficulties rise, settle disputes between the committee and the heads of service lines, and set the timetable on which the board hears about progress, overruns and choices still open.

The redesign over two years

The first ninety days are for agreeing principles, not drawing boxes: by their close, the Board Operations Committee should have endorsed a set of design principles grounded in capacity and service evidence. Around month nine the redesigned model should be approved, with group and local decision rights settled and capacity measures defined for every service line. By month 24 the model should be in place across the group, with service evidence reaching the committee on a cadence it trusts, and with operations exceptions being closed by the people who own them.

The operator the committee needs

Your knowledge of healthcare and life-science services comes from decisions that were yours, among them a commitment with no real support that you halted before it could do harm. Those businesses had at least $695 million in revenue, 3,900 people and a presence in four or more countries, and you led them through integration, cost transformation and digital transformation. The seat calls for operating cadence at level 4, and for operating model, network footprint and quality and safety at level 3. Before an exception is allowed to stay you establish whose budget bears it, and you can describe an open gap to a board committee without using the uncertainty to delay. Once the board has decided you still own the outcome, down to the slow work of closing every exception. If ending a commitment would need every country head's blessing, or you want sway over the group without answering for it across 24 months, this seat will feel uncomfortable.

Four stages, with quick answers

The Board Operations Committee meets you first, confidentially and by video, during week one. The Board Chair takes week three, working through the redesign with you. Week five puts you, in person, before executives who each run one of the group's functions; week seven is a session with the full board. Two working days after each stage, our assessment will be with you in writing.