Interim Group Chief People Officer — Value Agenda

Where two years should end

By month 24 the board should be reviewing a people agenda on a regular cadence that holds two things together that organisations often trade against each other: people's trust in how they are treated, and clear consequences for performance. Successors should be ready for senior roles, so that the arrangement does not depend on any single leader. That is the destination for the Interim Group Chief People Officer, an executive appointment reporting to the Board Chair.

The road there has two earlier markers. Within ninety days a group performance framework should be settled that sets out consequences clearly, with people decision rights and local thresholds written down. Around month nine those consequences should be applied consistently across markets, and development plans should be in place for the successors to senior roles. Consistency is the hinge: trust grows when people see the same standard applied to everyone, and erodes the moment an exception is made quietly for someone senior.

Why trust and consequence belong together

It is tempting to treat trust and accountability as opposites, as if fairness meant leniency and rigour meant fear. In practice the reverse is closer to the truth. People trust a system in which expectations are clear, judgements are explained and outcomes are predictable, even when those outcomes are hard. They distrust a system in which performance conversations are avoided and then arrive suddenly. In a state-linked organisation, where decisions about people may be scrutinised from outside as well as inside, that clarity is also a protection.

A framework with authority behind it

A performance framework is only as credible as the authority behind it. The chief people officer agrees where people decisions are taken, with defined limits left to local leadership, and sets the evidence by which performance, reward and people spending are judged across the group. Programmes that are not working can be held or closed. Any proposal that pushes its cost onto a team that never signed up for it is refused, as is investment whose case skips over uptake, what it leans on elsewhere, or the price of failure. The officer chooses the leadership line-up and the escalation route, resolves friction between the Board Chair and the heads of operations, and runs a board cycle that puts people progress, departures from the framework and pending calls in front of directors.

The people leader who fits

You have steered a crisis response felt in the boardroom and among front-line staff alike, and you have led a platform pivot and an integration, each of which tests whether people still believe what leaders tell them. That work was done in businesses with revenue of $515 million or more, 1,800 or more people across at least five countries, and you can point to evidence that changed how people, money or leadership time were deployed. In capability terms, think talent succession at level 4; reward architecture, capability building, and handling the board and its stakeholders should sit at level 3. You grow the next generation of leaders even as you redesign how the group works, and you would end a people commitment over the objections of some country heads.

Meeting the Chair, a committee chair and the board

During week one the Board Chair talks with you privately by video. The Risk Committee Chair follows in week three with a practical exercise. In the fifth week a panel of executives representing each function meets you in person, and the full board brings things to a close in week seven. You will learn the outcome of each stage within four working days.