Interim President — International Markets and Controls

An international leader whose baselines survived challenge

Ask the strongest candidates what they are proudest of and they will describe a baseline, set at scale, that stood firm when senior leaders and the specialists closest to the product and its data pushed back on it. That is the foundation of international growth that can be governed. The international business you have run reached $660 million in revenue and 1,100 people across eight countries at the least, and during a digital transformation you have redrawn who decides, how budgets flow and how often teams review their work.

Digital transformation, succession and buy-side M&A experience are examined, with strategy formation at level 4 and, each at level 3, judging risk, owning a P&L and keeping an operating cadence. A board decision does not end your accountability; you see it through, down to the dull business of closing each exception, and you can be straight with the Group Chief Executive Officer about what is unknown without letting it stall the work. A single country head cannot veto your decision to halt a commitment, and the result stays yours through the full term.

The authority to rebase international growth

The interim president holds executive authority to lead international growth, rebasing it around the constraints any growth plan must respect. You will set which international decisions are taken centrally and how much each market's leaders may approve alone, and name the evidence a funding, capacity or control decision must rest on. Every commitment gets your ruling to continue, wait or close, and a market plan that shifts cost or risk to another part of the organisation with nobody owning it goes no further. Investment will be declined where a market case does not show local uptake, the dependencies it creates or what happens if it disappoints. You will settle who leads each region and how problems are raised, and work out conflicts with operating leaders while budgets and staffing are still open.

The controls in the title are the point. International growth in technology tends to accumulate exceptions market by market: a pricing concession here, a data-residency workaround there, a customer-specific roadmap promise somewhere else. Each is defensible alone; together they can make a business ungovernable. Applying controls consistently across markets is what allows growth to be compared, funded and, when necessary, stopped.

Rebasing growth over twenty-four months

Three agreements should exist with the chief executive before the first ninety days have passed: the allocation of international decisions, the criteria for growth commitments and the limits on local leadership. Around month nine, international commitments should have been sorted into those that continue, those paused and those ended, with controls applied consistently across markets. By month 24 international leadership and escalation should be settled, and the board should be reviewing growth and controls on a steady cadence.

Four meetings before an appointment

The Group Chief Executive Officer sees you first, in a discreet video conversation in week one. The Regional President follows in week three with a practical session. Executive leaders from each function form an in-person panel during week five; the full board of directors meets you in the seventh week. Each stage is followed, within five working days, by our assessment in writing.