Advisory Director — Network Performance and Integration

Which practices deserve to spread

Every plant network has practices someone is proud of: a maintenance routine that keeps one line running, a quality check that catches problems early, an energy-saving method born of an environmental target. Spreading the good ones is among the cheapest improvements a manufacturer can make. Spreading the wrong ones, or spreading good ones into plants that cannot sustain them, is among the most expensive. The Advisory Director gives counsel to the Country Managing Director on telling these apart over 24 months.

The seat is advisory. The decisions remain with leadership; your contribution is the rigour of the advice that precedes them. You will help leadership agree how decisions are structured, including the thresholds local teams retain, and advise on the evidence for governing capital, capacity and the control framework across countries. You will recommend which practices and commitments should be scaled, paused or ended. You will question plans that leave exposure without anyone answerable for it, and investment cases silent on adoption, dependencies or what failure would cost. You will also counsel on who should lead which plants, how problems should rise and how often progress is reported, helping plant heads and leadership settle disagreements early.

As part of a multinational group, the organisation also works within group standards. Good advice here distinguishes the practices that must align with the group from those where local evidence should prevail, and says so clearly. A practice should earn its place on reliability and safety evidence, not on the reputation of the plant that invented it.

The two years in outline

Within the first ninety days your advice should have set the criteria for choosing which operating practices to scale across the integrated network. Around month nine the candidate practices should have been assessed against those criteria, with leadership advised on which to scale, which to pause and which to retire. By month 24 the scaled practices should have been reviewed for adoption and control, and a recommended approach to governing them endorsed by leadership.

An adviser with an operator's record

You have led through an ESG transition without letting the board's story drift from the operating evidence, and you bring professionalisation and succession experience as well; the organisations involved had at least $590 million in revenue and 1,400 people, working in four or more countries. Baselines you have set held up under a country managing director's questioning and under the sharper questioning of the plant, engineering and supply leaders nearest the work. The seat asks for operating cadence at level 4, and for operating model, network footprint and quality and safety at level 3. You keep controls that earn their place, put a visible price on every exception, and leave plant managers stronger than you found them. You can say what is still unknown without letting it slow the decision. If you need unanimous country-leader agreement before advising that a commitment stop, or want influence without remaining answerable for all 24 months, this is not your seat.

Starting with the Country Managing Director

The Country Managing Director will talk with you during week one, privately and over video. The third week is spent with the Audit Committee Chair, working through a question together. Week five also brings an in-person meeting with executives responsible for each function, and week seven is with the full board. Within three working days of each stage, our view reaches you in writing.