Interim Chief Operating Officer — Scale-Up

Month 18, working backwards

At month 18 the operation should be doing less, and doing it better. Every activity left in place should be there because a customer values it or because a control depends on it. Board reporting should rest on evidence rather than narrative, and a bench of successors should be ready to run the operation without the interim chief operating officer.

Getting there runs through month nine. By then the activities marked as low-value should be stopped or on hold, with the capacity they used moved to customer and control priorities instead of being quietly reabsorbed.

And the first ninety days set it up. In them, working with the Country Managing Director, every operations activity should be mapped by the customer and control value it carries, and the work that carries neither should be identified by name.

The authority behind the plan

Removing work is harder than adding it, because every activity has someone who believes in it. The Interim Chief Operating Officer therefore holds executive authority, reporting to the Country Managing Director. You will decide how operating calls are made and which decisions a plant head keeps, and decide the evidence required before money, capacity or controls are moved. Every activity and commitment gets your ruling: keep it, hold it or end it. A plan that leaves another plant or a customer team carrying exposure it never accepted is stopped, and investment missing adoption, dependencies or the downside is declined. You approve who leads each part of operations and how issues reach you; you settle disputes with plant heads before resources move, and settle how frequently progress, overruns and undecided questions reach the directors.

In manufacturing, control value is easy to underestimate. Inspection steps, sign-offs and records that look like waste may be the only thing preventing a quality escape or a supplier dispute. Part of the judgement is knowing which apparent waste is in fact protection.

An operator who has cut work before

You have taken activity out of an operation before and watched closely what happened to quality and customers afterwards. Your experience covers succession, buy-side M&A and turnaround, in businesses with revenue of at least $380 million, 1,000 or more people and two or more countries. The seat asks for operating cadence at level 4, with operating model, network footprint and quality and safety at level 3. You have brought a contested downside to a country managing director without trimming it, and you have withheld money from projects whose users and downside went unnamed, then rebuilt the operating capacity that was truly needed. Ending a commitment will not wait on every country head agreeing, and all 18 months are yours to answer for.

One video call, one case, one board

The Country Managing Director talks with you first, privately and on video, during week one. The Audit Committee Chair sets a working case for week two. You meet the directors in person in week three. Within three working days of each conversation you will receive our assessment in writing.