Interim Chief Executive Officer — Recovery

Calls that land on an interim chief executive's desk

The work of consolidating local plans into one agenda is mostly a sequence of difficult calls. A plant manager argues that a capacity investment is urgent because utilisation is high; the chief executive has to ask whether the margin that utilisation seems to promise is actually arriving. A country team wants to keep its own product variants; the question is whether customers value the difference or whether history protects it. A promising initiative has no one prepared to carry its downside; the answer may be to stop it, however popular it is.

The Interim Chief Executive Officer takes these calls with executive authority, reporting to the Investment Committee for 18 months. You will set how the business decides, including which approvals stay with a plant or country head, and say what evidence must back a call on capital, plant capacity or controls. Every commitment gets your ruling to proceed, hold or close, and a plan that would leave a plant or member business with exposure it never accepted stops with you. Investment will be declined where adoption, dependencies or the downside are missing from the case. You approve the leadership structure as well as the lines along which concerns travel upward, and you resolve conflicts between the Investment Committee and operating leaders before capital is committed.

In a cooperative or mutual, the agenda answers ultimately to members, whose interest lies in the enterprise's durability more than its next quarter. That shapes which trade-offs a chief executive should accept.

How the agenda should take shape

Over the first ninety days the Investment Committee should agree the framework for decisions and see the local plans folded into a single operating agenda for the business. Around month nine every commitment across plants and markets should have been ruled on, and the capacity released by ended commitments redirected to the agreed priorities rather than quietly absorbed. By month 18 the operating agenda should be stable and a leadership bench in place, so that the business holds its course without the interim chief executive's personal intervention.

Six countries, and a record across them

Your record was built in organisations with at least $325 million in revenue and 900 people, working across six or more countries, and you know the difference between necessary local judgement and variation that persists by habit. Your experience spans professionalisation, integration and turnaround. The appointment leans on strategy formation at level 4, supported by P&L ownership, operating cadence and risk judgement at level 3.

You make reversible decisions on incomplete operating evidence and tighten them as facts improve, rather than waiting for certainty that manufacturing rarely provides. You develop successors while changing the model. An investment committee will hear from you exactly what is still open, without that becoming an excuse to wait. Ending a commitment will not wait on every country head saying yes, and all 18 months of results are yours.

Committee, chair, executive team

The Investment Committee speaks with you first, by video and privately, during week one. The Audit Committee Chair then gives you a working case in week two. By week three you are with the executive committee in person, and that meeting ends the process. Within five working days of each conversation we will put our assessment to you in writing.