Interim Senior Vice President, Operations — Operating Renewal (Telecoms)

Judgements that will define the job

The hard questions in supplier and site accountability rarely concern the contract. They concern what happens between contracts. When a customer outcome fails, is it the supplier who delivered late, the site that accepted the work, or the specification that nobody reviewed? When a supplier meets every service level and the end-to-end result is still poor, who is accountable? When the obvious fix is to change suppliers, is that a remedy or a way of avoiding a harder conversation about how the work is designed?

The Interim Senior Vice President, Operations, will meet these questions repeatedly, and with executive authority. It is the executive's call which supplier and site decisions rest with local leaders, and which measures govern investment, capacity and control. Inherited commitments are decided one at a time: kept, suspended or stopped. Proposals that slide cost or risk onto a party who has not accepted it are halted, and investment cases with nothing to say about uptake or the downside go no further. The executive approves how operations leadership is arranged and how failures are raised, settles conflicts between the Country Managing Director and operating leaders, and decides how often supplier and site progress, the exceptions and the still-open decisions are reported.

A state-linked organisation adds its own dimension: outcomes are judged by a wider public as well as by customers, and a supplier failure is rarely only a commercial matter.

Building accountability over 24 months

Over the first ninety days, every supplier and every site should have end-to-end outcome measures agreed, with a single accountable owner for each. Around month nine supplier agreements and site reviews should be running against those outcomes, and underperformance should travel through one route to resolution instead of several competing ones. By month 24 the accountability should be embedded in contracts and in operating rhythm, with an operations bench able to hold suppliers and sites to it without the interim executive.

An operator who stays for the unglamorous part

We would expect your record to include a business turning over at least $660 million, with no fewer than 1,400 people, operating in three countries or more, and experience of integration, cost transformation and digital transformation. Holding suppliers and sites to outcomes is a matter of relentless review, so operating cadence is sought at level 4, backed by operating model, network footprint and quality and safety at level 3.

Your knowledge of this industry comes from decisions that were yours to own, among them a commitment without proper backing that you halted before it did damage. You have made someone accept the economics of an exception before letting it continue. You remain answerable after the decision is taken, including for the slow work of closing operations exceptions. And you are comfortable telling a long-standing supplier, and the site that defends it, that the relationship is under review.

Managing director, committee chair, executives, board

Things begin in week 1 with the Country Managing Director, in confidence and over video, on how supplier and site accountability might be drawn. The Risk Committee Chair follows in week 3, for a practical discussion of how supplier and site risk is owned end to end. Then, in week 5, executives leading the main functions question you in person, and in week 7 the full board does. Each stage is followed by our feedback, in writing, within four working days.