Interim Group Chief Executive Officer — Delivery

Leading the group while building the team that follows

Few briefs put a chief executive in a stranger position than designing a top team they will hand over to someone else. They must lead the group with full executive authority, making the calls a chief executive makes, while designing a team whose success will be judged after they have gone. The Interim Group Chief Executive Officer reports to the Investment Committee and carries that authority for 24 months. The leadership structure for the group's next ownership phase is the centrepiece: who sits at the top table, what each role decides, how they work together and who stands behind each of them.

Structure cannot be designed in isolation from the decisions it is meant to carry. So the chief executive will also set how group decisions are made, fix the limits within which local leaders decide alone, and determine what proof must support spending, capacity and control decisions across the group. They will decide which inherited commitments continue and which are held or stopped. Proposals that push cost or risk into another business unit without its acceptance will be stopped; investment cases silent on who will actually use what is bought, what it depends on and how it could go wrong will be declined. Conflicts between the Investment Committee and operating leaders will be resolved by the chief executive before the group's money is spent, and since a consumer business rarely has the luxury of pausing trade while authority changes hands, the work has to be done in flight.

Agreement, a new team, readiness

Two agreements should be in hand within the first ninety days: how group decisions are made, and the leadership structure for the next ownership phase, both settled between the Investment Committee and the chief executive. Around month nine the new leadership team should be in place, and inherited group commitments should have been continued, held or stopped on the evidence. By month 24 the group should be ready for its next ownership phase, with successors leading and board reporting running on an agreed cadence.

Restructuring at the top of the house

You have led a business of $945 million or more in revenue, employing 2,600 people in six countries. Regulatory remediation, joint ventures and restructuring will each be weighed in your record. Restructuring is the most directly relevant, because redesigning a leadership structure is a restructuring at the top of the house. Joint ventures matter because they teach you to lead through people you do not wholly control, and remediation because it shows you can work under scrutiny without losing momentum. At level 4 we need strategy formation; at level 3, operating cadence, risk judgement and full ownership of a P&L. You have made general management calls where waiting would have cost the business, and you bring successors on during the redesign so that the group at month 24 runs without needing you. You will tell the Investment Committee directly what is not yet known, and you will halt a commitment without first securing every country head's blessing.

The process has four parts. The Investment Committee talks with you first, privately over video, during week one. In week three the Regional President explores with you how leadership changes would land in the markets. In week five, executives from each function, some of whom may sit in the structure you design, meet you in person to explore your approach. The seventh week brings you before the full board. Expect our response in writing within five working days of each stage.