Interim Group Chief Information Officer — Growth at Scale

By month eighteen: less dependency, the same delivery pace

The measure of success for this appointment is a pair of lines on a chart moving in opposite directions. By month 18 the group's dependency on technology it cannot easily change, replace or control should be falling, while the pace at which products and services reach clients holds steady or improves. Architecture governance and escalation routes should be in place to keep both lines moving after the interim term ends.

Getting there starts in the first ninety days, when target architecture choices are agreed, naming the dependencies to reduce and the delivery commitments that must be protected while that happens. Around month nine technology investment cases should be judged on how far they reduce dependency and what they do to delivery, with proposals that lack an owner stopped. Between those points the work is a long series of trade-offs, each made in the open.

Dependency is a risk decision before it is a technical one

Every organisation depends on something: a platform, a vendor, a data store, a small team that understands a critical system. Dependency is not wrong in itself. It becomes dangerous when nobody chose it deliberately, when the exit cost is unknown, or when it concentrates risk that the business would not accept if it were spelled out. The Interim Group Chief Information Officer, reporting to the Regional President with executive authority, has to decide which dependencies to reduce, which to accept with eyes open, and in what order, without freezing delivery while the work happens.

The officer decides which technology choices are made for the group and which local leaders may make within agreed limits, and what evidence an architecture or platform decision must rest on in each market. Technology commitments can be kept, paused or retired. A proposal that buys speed today by moving cost or risk onto another team's future is stopped, and investment is refused where the case ignores who will use the result, which systems or suppliers it ties the group to, or what failure would cost. They determine the leadership structure, set how issues escalate, and act as the tie-breaker between the Regional President and operating leaders.

The technology leader this needs

You have held a seat where local autonomy made technology choices hard to align, in an organisation turning over $775 million or more, with 3,200 or more people spread over three or more countries. Evidence has changed your decisions on whom to back, what to fund and where to look. Cost transformation, digital transformation and turnaround form the experience the Regional President will test. Unusually for a technology seat, the leading capability is risk judgement at level 4, supported at level 3 by three more: getting products delivered, designing architecture that scales, and governing data and AI. You can tell which local freedoms are worth keeping, and you would stop a technology commitment without waiting for unanimous agreement.

President, chair, board

The Regional President speaks with you confidentially over video in week one. The Board Chair sets you a technology case in week two, and the third week brings an in-person discussion with the board's directors. Our response arrives within five working days of each stage.