Interim Regional People and Organisation Director — Delivery

Build, buy, or stop paying for it

Every professional services business carries capabilities it built deliberately, capabilities it acquired along the way, and capabilities that persist mainly because nobody has decided to stop funding them. The Interim Regional People and Organisation Director is appointed to make that third category visible and to decide, capability by capability, which should be grown internally, which should be bought in, and which should no longer be paid for. It is a 24-month appointment with executive authority, reporting to the Board Chair.

The decision is harder than a spreadsheet makes it look. Building takes longer than anyone budgets for but leaves knowledge in the organisation. Buying is fast but brings integration risk and a cost that rarely falls. Stopping releases money but can quietly remove the one capability a client relationship depended on. A strong people leader weighs all three against the work the business actually needs to do, not against the organisation chart it happens to have.

Where the director's authority reaches

For the region, the director determines which people decisions are made centrally and which stay with local leaders below agreed limits. They decide what evidence a capability investment must bring, and how headcount, skills and control are judged across markets. A hiring programme, an acquisition of a team or a training budget that no longer serves the capability map can be paused or ended; a proposal that loads its cost onto another unit without that unit's agreement goes no further; and a case silent on who will actually use the new capability, its dependencies, or how failure would look is sent back. The director chooses who leads and how issues escalate, and brokers agreement when the Board Chair and the heads of operations pull in different directions.

From capability map to regional structure

A regional capability map should be agreed inside ninety days, showing which capabilities are to be built, bought or no longer funded, with an accountable owner for each. Around month nine people investment cases should be passing a test of take-up and dependencies, and funding should have been withdrawn from the capabilities marked for exit. By month 24 those build-or-buy choices should be reflected in an approved regional organisation structure, with a stronger leadership bench in place than at the start.

The people leader this calls for

In people decisions you have acted where hesitation would have cost something countable, in a business of $400 million or more in revenue, at least 1,700 people and five or more countries. No exception survives on your watch until you know who pays for it. The Board Chair will look at your value creation experience, your M&A buy-side work, where you had to decide which acquired capabilities to keep, and your record in professionalisation. Talent succession at level 4 carries the most weight; reward architecture, capability building and the management of the board and its stakeholders are each wanted at level 3. You would stop a people commitment without needing every country leader's consent.

Chair, committee chair, functional panel, board

Your first meeting, by video and in private, is with the Board Chair during the opening week. You then spend part of week three with the Risk Committee Chair, working a capability decision through. In week five a panel of executives who run the organisation's various functions meets you in person. The process closes in the seventh week with the directors together. You will hear from us within four working days of every stage.