Interim Regional Legal Director — Delivery

The judgement calls inside entity governance

Entity governance is usually treated as a filing exercise: registers kept current, annual returns made, board minutes signed. The real work is elsewhere. Each legal entity carries directors who are personally accountable for decisions, and the question that matters is whether the people who actually make those decisions are the people the law holds responsible. The Interim Regional Legal Director is appointed with executive authority for 12 months, reporting to the Regional President, to make that answer yes across the region. Several judgement calls follow from it.

The first is where each decision belongs. The director sets the regional allocation of decisions and the limits retained by local leaders. An entity board that rubber-stamps decisions taken elsewhere exposes its directors; one that tries to decide everything paralyses the business. The right line differs by entity and has to be argued for, not assumed.

The second is which evidence counts. The director selects the evidence used to govern money, capacity and control, and that choice determines whether an entity board is genuinely informed or simply notified.

The third is what to stop. The director decides which commitments continue, wait or end, and stops any legal proposal that pushes its cost onto another party with nobody answerable for it. Investment cases that ignore take-up, dependencies or downside are turned down. The fourth is the shape of the team and the conflicts it has to resolve: the director decides who leads and how matters rise, and settles disagreements between the Regional President and operating leaders before money changes hands.

The year at ninety days, month nine and month 12

By the end of the third month, entity governance across the region should be mapped to clear decision owners, with the limits each country's managers retain agreed. By around month nine the gaps found in that mapping should be either closed or owned, and ownerless legal proposals stopped. By month 12 regional entity governance should be running on a reporting rhythm, with the legal leadership structure and the escalation route approved and in use.

A legal leader who has paid the cost of delay

Your legal calls have been made where waiting had a price you could measure, in settings with revenue of $350 million or more and 1,300 or more people spread over seven or more countries. You have carried a contested downside in front of a senior executive without dressing it up, and you can tell which entity-level discretion deserves protecting and which should go, writing that boundary down so others can use it. Value creation, succession and professionalisation are the experiences the Regional President will weigh. Expect to be assessed on governance ethics at level 4, and at level 3 on transaction legal work, on handling disputes and investigations, and on managing the board and its stakeholders. You want accountability for the full year.

Conversations with the people you would work alongside

The Regional President is your first conversation, held privately over video during the opening week. Three weeks in, in week three, you work with the Risk Committee Chair, probably on where you would draw the line for a particular entity. Week five puts you, in person, before executives who lead the organisation's main functions; the directors meet you together in week seven. Expect to hear from us within four working days of each.